Why go to the trouble but don't address the 10A input? Looking at pictures of a complete meter, it doesn't appear they used additional fuses in the leads that were shipped with it. Did they have to kill a few people before they figured out both would require HRC fuses?
I doubt anyone died. Is the original Fluke 77 CAT IV rated? Perhaps on the 10A range they are counting on your panel circuit breaker for the high energy interrupt.
I've seen the results of cheap DMMs with unfused 10A ranges getting plugged into the wall and AFAIK it hasn't been a big deal. Blows the end off the tip, blows the PCB traces off the circuit board and trips the breaker, in that order. DMM and wall socket are toast, nobody dies. It would be interesting to see that same scene played out with a bigger breaker, like >100A.
Let's assume that it was no big deal. If they felt worse case, it would be shunted across a CAT II outlet and that the homes circuit breaker was good enough, why wouldn't this be true for both inputs? Why install a large HRC fuse at all?
What's really odd is we fast forward to the next revision of the 77 with the fused 10A input. Again we see only two fuses, one large, one small. The large is now used for the 10A and the small is still there for the 300mA input. The still call out a 630mA 250V fuse but have upped the large fuse to 15A 600V. What ever drove them to add the large HRC fuse in series is no longer a concern.
It does seem like there is a story behind this.
A bit of a search, a member had uploaded their manual for the meter.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/fluke-77-strange-demise/*****
Note the warnings added to the manual between the two versions. With the later revision, for safety they reference IEC 348, ANSI/ISA-S82, UL1244 and CSA C22.2 No. 231.
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Also, I have a flavor of that old Limitron fuse. Slightly different crimp and label. These are old enough to be rated for 600V AC only at 100KA unlike what we see today with additional DC ratings.