Some great previous HN discussions on barbed wire telephony:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

There are also discussions about networking over barbed wire.

Very cool to see one comment linking to an old Sears magazine from the 1920s, showing some of the equipment people would have constructed these networks from:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101066805050&vi...

The thing I'm most amazed by is how "modern" the catalogue is, especially the clothing and phonograph sections.