Bomb, or Shell, a hollow iron shot for heavy guns and mortars, 
filled with powder, and thrown at a considerable elevation, and 
intended to act by the force of its fall and explosion. They are 
generally the largest of all projectiles used, as a mortar, being 
shorter than any other class of ordnance, can be made so much 
larger in diameter and bore. Bombs of 10, 11, and 13 inches are 
now of common use; the French, at the siege of Antwerp’ in 
1832, used a mortar and shells cast in Belgium, of 24 inches 
calibre. The powder contained in a bomb is exploded by a fuze or 
hollow tube filled with a slow-burning composition, which takes 
fire by the discharge of the mortar. These fuzes are so timed that 
the bomb bursts as short a time as possible after it has reached its 
destination, sometimes just before it reaches the ground. Beside 
the powder, there are sometimes a few pieces of Valenciennes 
composition '’” put into the shell, to set fire to combustible objects, 
but it is maintained that these pieces are useless, the explosion 
shattering them to atoms, and that the incendiary effects of shells 
without such composition are equally great. Bombs are thrown at 
angles varying from 15° to 45°, but generally from 30° to 45°; the 
larger shells and smaller charges having the greatest proportional 
ranges at about 45°, while smaller shells with greater charges 
range furthest at about 30°. The charges are in all instances 
proportionally small: a 13-inch bomb weighing 200 lbs., thrown 
out of a mortar at the elevation of 45°, with a charge of 3 "ly Ibs. 
powder, ranges 1,000 yards, and with 20 Ibs. or '/i9 of its weight, 
4,200 yards. The effects of such a bomb, coming down from a 
tremendous height, are very great if it falls on any thing 
destructible. It will go through all the floors in a house, and 

penetrate vaulted arches of considerable strength; and, though a 
13-inch shell only contains about 7 lbs. of powder, yet its bursting 
acts like the explosion of a mine, and the fragments will fly to a 
distance of 800 or 1,000 yards if unobstructed. On the contrary, if 
it falls on soft soil, it will imbed itself in the earth to a depth of 
from 8 to 12 feet, and either be extinguished or explode without 
doing any harm. Bombs are therefore often used as small mines, 
or fougasses, being imbedded in the earth about a foot deep in 
such places where the enemy must pass; to fire them, a slow match 
or train is prepared. This 1s the first shape in which they occur in 
history: the Chinese, according to their chronicles, several 
centuries before our era used metal balls filled with bursting 
composition and small pieces of metal, and fired by a slow match. 
They were employed in the defence of defiles, being deposited 
there on the approach of the enemy. In 1232, at the siege of 
Kai-fong-fu, the Chinese used, against an assault, to roll bombs 
down the parapet among the assailant Mongols. Mahmood, Shah 
of Guzerat, in the siege of Champaneer, in 1484, threw bombs 
into the town. In Europe, not to mention earlier instances of a 
more doubtful character, the Arabs in Spain, and the Spaniards 
after them, threw shells and carcasses from ordnance after the 
beginning of the 14th century, but the costliness and difficulties of 
manufacturing hollow shot long prevented their general introduc- 
tion. They have become an important ingredient of siege artillery 
since the middle of the 17th century only. 

Written between September 29 and Oc- Reproduced from The New Ameri- 
tober 6, 1857 can Cyclopaedia 

. Cyclopaedia, Vol. III, 1858