The word "bomb" comes to us from the French, who derived it from the
Latin. But the Romans got it originally from the Greek _bombos_,
meaning a deep, hollow sound. "Bombard" is a derivation. Today bomb is
pronounced "balm," but in the early days it was commonly pronounced
"bum." The modern equivalent of the "bum" is an HE shell.
The first recorded use of explosive shells was by the Venetians in
1376. Their bombs were hemispheres of stone or bronze, joined together
with hoops and exploded by means of a primitive powder fuze. Shells
filled with explosive or incendiary mixtures were standard for
mortars, after 1550, but they did not come into general use for
flat-trajectory weapons until early in the nineteenth century,
whereafter the term "shell" gradually won out over "bomb."
In any event, this projectile was one of the most effective ever used
in the smoothbore against earthworks, buildings, and for general
bombardment. A delayed action shell, diabolically timed to roll
amongst the ranks with its fuze burning, was calculated to "disorder
the stoutest men," since they could not know at what awful instant the
bomb would burst.
A bombshell was simply a hollow, cast-iron sphere. It had a single
hole where the powder was funneled in--full, but not enough to pack
too tightly when the fuze was driven in. Until the 1800's, the larger
bombs were not always smooth spheres, but had either a projecting
neck, or collar, for the fuze hole or a pair of rings at each side of
the hole for easier handling (fig. 41). In later years, however, such
projections were replaced by two "ears," little recesses beside the
fuze hole. A pair of tongs (something like ice tongs) seized the shell
by the ears and lifted it up to the gun bore.
During most of the eighteenth century, shells were cast thicker at the
base than at the fuze hole on the theory that they were (1) better
able to resist the shock of firing from the cannon and (2) more likely
to fall with the heavy part underneath, leaving the fuze uppermost and
less liable to extinguishment. Müller scoffed at the idea of
"choaking" a fuze, which, he said, burnt as well in water as in any
other element. Furthermore, he preferred to use shells "everywhere
equally thick, because they would then burst into a greater number of
pieces." In later years, the shells were scored on the interior to
ensure their breaking into many fragments.