A brief insight into the world of device fuses: Significance and Development of Fuses in Electrical Devices

For more than 100 years, technicians and engineers have put their efforts into working out a solution to improve the safety of the devices and electrical circuits invented and developed by them on the basis of fuses. Most often the driving force behind those endeavors were accidents involving significant material damages or even the loss of lives.

The distribution of electrical devices in private households as well (especially radio sets) back in the 20ies and 30ies of the last century ignited the spark for a chaos with respect to the diversity of variants. It was not until the introduction of a regulation system in the 30ies/40ies (e.g. DIN and VDE) that the protection device "Fuse" was standardized.

Back in 1950, the development of improved fuses, which were optimized to the demands of the electrical industry was rather a reaction to the trends in the electronic technology. The development and standardization of fuses can primarily be ascribed to the efforts of the technicians and engineers of the company Wickmann, which was founded in 1918,

The evaluation of the Wickmann archives provides the basis for this paper. The company Wickmann based in Witten closed its doors in 2007. The book at hand contains abstracts of its history and recent research findings and developments in the field of safety engineering, which are aimed to keep pace with the anticipated trends in electronics.