A wiring party with shovels and screw pickets.A soldier using a barbed wire anchor spike to screw in a picket at Fort Belvoir, Virginia (August, 1942)
A screw picket is a metal device which is used to secure objects to the ground. Today, screw pickets are used widely to temporarily "picket" dogs. They are also used to graze animals such as sheep, goats, and horses. Screw pickets are also used to stabilize small trees, tent poles, and other objects that are intended to remain upright.
The original picket was a stake hammered into the ground to secure a horse by tying it to the stake. This required a second tool (a hammer) or the availability of a rock to use instead of a tool. The screw picket is screwed (by turning it) into the ground. In hard ground, it requires a second tool (a leverage bar, or a spare screw picket) or the availability of a length of wood. Screw pickets can be easily bent or broken, but less easily pulled from the ground.
Military non-equestrian use
Barbed wire picket
Screw pickets (used as supports for barbed wire defences) were introduced c. 1915 as a replacement for timber posts. Crown Iron Works Co. (Minneapolis, MN) made over 10 million of these screw post pickets for WW1, WW2 and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The French name for this type of "steel stake" was "queue de cochon" or pigtail. The World War I steel stake became known in the British Army as a "corkscrew picket". The corkscrew picket was made from a steel bar which had its bottom end bent into a spiral coil. It also had three loops or "eyes" (some even had four) formed, one at top, one at midway and one just above the corkscrew spiral. The final product was about eight feet long.
Groups of soldiers known as wiring parties went out at night into no man's land to position these supports. They later strung the barbed wire through the loops to form a defensive wire obstacle as a protection for their trench line. The British called this type of stake a 'corkscrew' picket because it was screwed into the ground rather than hammered in as the timber posts had been (the hammering made loud noise, usually attracting enemy fire). The screw pickets replaced the timber posts (although screw pickets were less rigid than timber posts), because they could be installed rapidly and silently. A wiring party is described in detail in World War I novel All Quiet on the Western Front by contemporary author Erich Maria Remarque.
The corkscrew picket was screwed into the ground by turning it in a clockwise direction using an entrenching tool's handle or a stick inserted in the bottom eye of the picket for leverage. The bottom eye was used in order to avoid bending the vertical bar of the picket.[1]
Notes
↑ Army War College. "Notes on the Construction and Equipment of Trenches." April 1917: Government Printing Office.
In woodworking and construction, a nail is a small object made of metal which is used as a fastener, as a peg to hang something, or sometimes as a decoration. Generally, nails have a sharp point on one end and a flattened head on the other, but headless nails are available. Nails are made in a great variety of forms for specialized purposes. The most common is a wire nail. Other types of nails include pins, tacks, brads, spikes, and cleats.
Barbed wire, also known as barb wire, is a type of steel fencing wire constructed with sharp edges or points arranged at intervals along the strands. Its primary use is the construction of inexpensive fences, and it is also used as a security measure atop walls surrounding property. As a wire obstacle, it is a major feature of the fortifications in trench warfare.
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A C-clamp or G-clamp or G-cramp is a type of clamp device typically used to hold a wood or metal workpiece, and often used in, but are not limited to, carpentry and welding. Often believed that these clamps are called "C" clamps because of their C-shaped frame, or also often called C-clamps or G-clamps because including the screw part, they are shaped like an uppercase letter G. However, in fact, they were originally called a carriage maker's clamp, or Carriage Clamp.
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A deep foundation is a type of foundation that transfers building loads to the earth farther down from the surface than a shallow foundation does to a subsurface layer or a range of depths. A pile or piling is a vertical structural element of a deep foundation, driven or drilled deep into the ground at the building site.
Wire wrapping is one of the oldest techniques for making handmade jewelry. This technique is done with jewelry wire and findings similar to wire to make components. Wire components are then connected to one another using mechanical techniques with no soldering or heating of the wire. Frequently, in this approach, a wire is bent into a loop or other decorative shape and then the wire is wrapped around itself to finish the wire component. This makes the loop or decorative shape permanent. The technique of wrapping wire around itself gives this craft its name of wire wrapping.
A screw terminal is a type of electrical connection where a wire is held by the tightening of a screw.
Wiring parties,, were used during World War I on the Western Front as an offensive countermeasure against the enemy’s barbed wire obstacles. Though hazardous and stressful duty, work was done at night to repair, improve, and rebuild their own wire defences, while also sabotaging and cutting the enemy's. In battles all across the Western Front, cutting parties were successful in creating breaches in the wire lines, offering their comrades a better chance to cross no man's land.
Barbed wire was one of the attacker's great problems. There were cutters, but not enough, and men were often killed before they could cut a way.
British telephone sockets were introduced in their current plug and socket form on 19 November 1981 by British Telecom to allow subscribers to connect their own telephones. The connectors are specified in British Standard BS 6312. Electrical characteristics of the telephone interface are specified by individual network operators, e.g. in British Telecom's SIN 351. Electrical characteristics required of British telephones used to be specified in BS 6305.
The 24 cm schwere Flügelminenwerfer IKO or 24 cm sFIMW IKO was a heavy mortar used by the Imperial German Army during the First World War.
The 24 cm schwere FlügelMinenWerfer Albrecht, or 24 cm sFIMW 17 Albrecht, was a heavy mortar used by the Imperial German Army during the First World War.
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