Why we picture bombs as round black balls with a burning wick (2016)

Hm. I&#x27;d suggest a second advantage of the &quot;ball with fuse&quot; or &quot;stick with fuse&quot; - and from there, the &quot;C4 with unrealistic timer LED&quot; makes a lot of sense:<p>The fuse can act as an agent of suspense, just as Hitchcock described it. It&#x27;s a very simple indicator - a red dot or a flame, and the length of the fuse is how long to go until an earth-shattering kaboom. And it&#x27;s obvious what&#x27;s going to happen to a character if they hold it, so it&#x27;s easy to create suspense. &quot;Oh no, now the protagonist has the bomb. Oh yes, now the villain has it. Oh no, now the villain tricked the protagonist and put the bomb in their pants!&quot;<p>That is much more interesting from a story telling point of view than a realistic bomb - a bunch of C4 with a mobile phone strapped to it and zero way to understand when it will ruin your day. Unless you include the trigger for those in the story, but then complexity grows.

I was quite sure that this depiction of a bomb was based on 18th century grenades, which were spherical and had a string fuse. The word ‘grenade’ even comes from pomegranate, due to the visual similarity. It seems like this depiction may have originated a little further back than the American Civil War.<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Grenade" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Grenade</a><p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Pomegranate" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Pomegranate</a>

My first job was in an office which got quite regular bomb threats. We would be cleared out and the police would do a sweep. Some of the guys were inspired to make mock-up spherical black bombs as desk ornaments. Next bomb scare the police were very very unamused!<p>Also just remembering one day we were told to go home at 4:30. After some digging we found that the bomb was due to go off at 5:00. Showed a lot of faith in the bomb builders!

Interesting parallel here to the floppy disk icon being used for &quot;save&quot;. It&#x27;s quite possible that icon is ubiquitous enough that, without a push to change it, it sticks around for 100 years as well.

The article dismisses the <i>stringy</i> fuse because spherical mortar bombs had a hollow wooden fuse, but 18th and early 19th century hand grenades were also spherical and had a <i>stringy</i> fuse.

It&#x27;s for the same reason that we &quot;fire&quot; guns or that a motion picture is called a &quot;film&quot;: technology changes but the symbols we use to refer to it stay the same.

I want to know where the whole &quot;do I cut the red wire or the blue wire?&quot; trope comes from ..... surely you just pull the detonator out then cut its wires

Bugs bunny is why. Seriously. Most popular cartoon of its time, every kid of the era (40s to 70s) watched it...

What I would like to know is why vibrating devices like razors or dildos are regularly being considered as indicating a bomb. Why would a bomb vibrate prior to exploding?

I picture them that way mostly because of all the games of Stratego I played as a kid. I was surprised not to see it mentioned in the article!

Sorta related to round black bombs: I recently watched The Spy Who Loved Me, and realized that this is where I got the idea that grenades aren’t thrown like baseballs; instead, you gotta do a kinda straight-armed huck over your shoulder. Not sure if that grenade throw is grounded in reality, or just a thing that war movies made up.

Interesting read.<p>I always think of Batman <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;9pSD26bGy3I" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;9pSD26bGy3I</a>

It was Spy vs Spy for me

Too bad a lot of the links does not work anymore.

Cartoons are one hell of a drug especially for kids. I miss them so much.

&gt; However, the black, spherical bomb, wick slowly burning away to a boom, has remained the understood image for an explosive.<p>According to who? Citation needed.

I think kids today think of bombs like cubes of tnt like Minecraft.

This Atlas Obscura website seems interesting. As a long time volunteer for Wikipedia, I try to avoid it as much as possible. A hundred people editing one article, with zero editorial oversight, leads to dogshit articles that are not enjoyable to read.