Bomb, in ordnance, the same as a bomb shell; a hollow iron ball, spheroid, or anything similar, filled with gunpowder, and provided with a time or percussion fuse. It is fired from a mortar or howitzer.
Modern political upheavals have induced a traffic in packages of explosives, which have been christened bombs. These terrific agents of destruction have been used with murderous effect in the larger European cities: St. Petersburg, Madrid and Paris; also in Chicago. The anarchists have regularly established factories for the production of these missiles, in which the elements are combined with great nicety and scientific precision. The usual method of construction is to fill a hollow sphere with some high explosive together with pieces of scrap iron, nails, bullets, or anything that will wound.
Entry from Everybody's Cyclopedia, 1912.