Its origins hark back to the days of pneumatic shutters where the shutter was operated with a squeeze air bulb, and then carried on to mechanical shutters to provide and emulate the behaviour characteristics of the early versions.
So basically open for as long as you want
Probably not wise, you'll just massively overexpose everything.
Bulb is only really useful when you want shutter speeds longer than the 30 seconds the camera can automatically time for you.
Pretty pointless doing less than that on bulb, when you could just set the shutter speed on the camera for it.
As above. I also have some very vague memories of a folding camera I had when I was a kid. It had B (Bulb) and T (Time). Using a cable release, one of these settings required separate presses to open and close the shutter, the other just held it open for as long as you kept the button pressed. Can't remember which was which though.
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