A circuit technique is described which reduces the rise times of high‐power pulses by means of exploding wires. This circuit is a nonlinear lumped parameter transmission line. The magnetic energy is stored in the interstage lead inductances and rapidly transferred into (or more correctly, shared with) succeeding stages by the vaporization of exploding wire resistive fuse elements connected in shunt between the leads. In our case, each of three resistive fuse elements consisted of 20 to 50 parallel 0.001‐in. diam copper wires held in place across a 2‐in. gap with pressure sensitive tape. An empirically determined arrangement is described wherein we have increased the maximum rate of current rise from 300 000 amp/&mgr;sec to 800 000 amp/&mgr;sec. Using this technique, a magnetic field of 10 000 gauss is built up in 0.15 &mgr;sec throughout a volume 4 cm in length and 10 cm in diameter.It will be shown that the best results are obtained with high conductivity fuse materials such as copper or aluminum. Similarity theorems are presented for the design of pulse steepening elements for use with circuits having similar pulse shapes but different energies and characteristic impedances.