In the 1880s, lonely farmers connected their phones to barb wires in order to communicate with each other. Building telephone lines was expensive and it did not make sense to build one in an area that barely had any people. The patent for barbed wire was first filed in 1867. By the 1880s, barbed wire was strewn all across the country. The set-up was far from perfect because there was no switchboard, which meant that every phone connected to the barbed wire would ring simultaneously when a call was placed. Each house had a distinctive ring, but there was no guarantee of privacy. Anyone on the line could listen to the conversation. According to historian Rob MacDougall, "Talk was free, and so people soon began to 'hang out' on the phone, just as they do today in online social networks. People would read the newspaper over the telephone… They'd have musical nights where someone would play their banjo, someone else would sing along, and others would listen. The shared line could even serve as a rudimentary broadcasting system. On many fence-phone networks, a single, very long ring would signal a 'line call,' an announcement of interest to everyone on the system. This might be a weather report, weekly livestock prices, word that the train would arrive late, or news of an emergency such as a prairie fire."