Bomb

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The article "Bomb" is the first of a new batch of articles beginning with B which Engels wrote in accordance with Dana's request (see Note 49). Marx made excerpts from reference books in the library of the British Museum, in particular from The British Cyclopaedia of Arts and Sciences by Ch. F. Partington and sent them to Engels, presumably on September 16, 1857, together with excerpts on bridges. On October 6 Marx made an entry in his notebook: "Cyclopaedia. Bomb. Bombardment. Bomb-Ketch. Bomb-Vessel. Bombardier. Bomb-Proof", which shows that Marx dispatched the articles listed to New York on that day.

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 V2 lbs. powder, ranges 1,000 yards, and with 20 lbs. or V10 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 is 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 Kaï-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 introduction. They have become an important ingredient of siege artillery since the middle of the 17th century only.