Fuse
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a tube or casing filled with combustible material, and used for igniting a charge in a mine or a hollow projectile. The invention was undoubtedly contemporaneous with that of hollow projectiles. The following are the principal cipal varieties of fuses in use: (1) Bickford fuse, used for mining and submarine purposes. It consists of a small linen tube filled with gunpowder, the whole being covered with pitch. It burns at the rate of one yard in 70 seconds. (2) Blasting fuse, used in mining and quarrying. It is filled with a slow-burning composition, allowing time for the operatives to reach a place of safety before it burns down to the charge. It is also used for submarine blasting. (3) Combination fuse, for hollow projectiles, comprises a time-fuse and a percussion or concussion fuse united in the same case. The former is designed to explode the charge in case the latter fails to act on striking. Another form is that in which the time-fuse explodes the percussion-fuse. The variety is used with such explosives as dynamite and gun cotton. (4) Concussion fuse, for hollow projectiles; designed to explode the charge when the shell strikes an object. (5) Delayed action fuse, for use with common shell against earthworks. It causes the projectile to explode four seconds after impact. (6) Electric fuse is one adapted to be ignited by the passage of an electric spark through it. (7) Percussion fuse, embraces a capsule charged with fulminate, which is exploded by a plunger or its equivalent, when the projectile strikes. The plunger is held by a pin sufficiently strong to keep it in place in case of a fall, yet weak enough to be severed by the shock of striking. (8) Safety fuse is a cord or ribbonshaped fuse filled with a fulminating or quick-burning composition, and sufficiently long to be ignited at a safe distance from the chamber where the charge is placed. (9) Tape fuse is a safety fuse, so called from its shape. (10) Time-fuse is one which is adapted either by cutting off a portion of its length or by the character of its composition to burn a certain definite time.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's list of 1921 is essentially the ordnance world before electronics: powder trains cut to length, plungers held by shear pins, and Bickford's linen-and-pitch cord burning a yard in seventy seconds. The decisive break came in 1943, when Allied forces fielded the radio proximity fuze (VT), a miniature radar in the shell nose that detonated it near a target rather than on impact or after a guessed interval; it transformed anti-aircraft fire and, at the Ardennes, artillery airbursts over troops. Today's artillery uses multi-option electronic fuzes programmed by the gun, and commercial blasting has largely replaced burning safety fuse with electric detonators and shock tube, a plastic tube lined with reactive powder that carries a signal without exploding. Two smaller things: the ordnance sense is now usually spelled "fuze" to distinguish it from the electrical fuse Collier's does not mention here, and Bickford's safety fuse, patented in 1831, is still made and still burns at roughly the rate given.
Written for this edition, 2026.