The pencil bomb attacks were used in multiple acts of state-sponsored terrorism[citation needed] by Imperial Germany during World War I.
[1] When the bomb prototype was first shown to Rintelen by Scheele it was a hollow cylinder of lead the size of a large cigar.
When the two acids mingled at the appointed time, a silent but intense flame, from twenty to thirty centimetres long, shot out from both ends of the tube, and while it was still burning the lead casing melted away, leaving very little evidence of the source of the fire.
[1] [2] Von Rintelen and his ring of German agents would slip the bombs onto ships carrying munitions bound for war.
The first batch of bombs was manufactured on the SS Friedrich Der Grosse, a Norddeutscher Lloyd liner that at the outset of World War I was interned by the United States in New York harbour.