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www.all-about-forensic-science.com 
(Originally Published in Popular Science 1927)
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In a county in Western New York a man was found guilty of a doublemurder on the opinion of a firearms "expert" that the bullets remove fromthe bodies had issued from the defendant's revolver. The case aroused theinterest of Charles E. Waite, a lifelong criminal investigator, then attachedto the office of the State Attorney General. He proved the bullets couldnot possibly have come from the weapon in question, established theinnocence of the convicted man and secured his pardon, and broughtabout the arrest of the actual murderers.From that time, twelve years ago, Waite devoted his life to establishing asystem of bullet and firearm identification which would require no"opinion' of experts to substantiate it. It was to deal with facts, and factsalone. In ten years he visited every pistol and revolver factory in America,and many in Europe, gathering a mass of data about weapons and theirmanufacture. Later he and I joined forces, adding as associates Philip O.Gravelle, a master of photography and John H. Fisher, an expert inmicrometrics. Since the death of Mr. Waite last year, I have continued thework.Today the result of our efforts is a new science of identifying weapons - ascience as exact and conclusive as that of tracing criminals by theirfingerprints founded on the revelations of the microscope and precisionmeasurements within the ten thousandth of an inch.This science bears the rather high sounding name of "forensic ballistics.Actually, though, it is simplicity itself. Like the fingerprint system, it isbased on the fact that no two things ever are exactly alike. A bullet firedthrough a pistol, revolver or rifle invariably bears certain distinctive marksor scratches - the "fingerprint" of that particular weapon's barrel. Even
 
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bullets fired from two weapons of exactly the same make and type andmade by the same machine and tools, bear characteristic imprints whicheven untrained eyes can distinguish under the microscope.Moreover, the shell from which a bullet is fired also bears individual marksmade by the firing pin and breech block of the weapon. We havedeveloped scientific methods of employing these marks to trace a bulletor shell to the weapon from which it came; and of proving whether acertain bullet could possibly have been fired from a given weapon.Perhaps I can best give an idea of the methods by describing briefly myrecent tests of the bullets, shells and pistol in evidence in the famousSacco-Vanzetti murder case, in which Nicola Sacco and BartolomeoVanzetti were put to deal for the murder of a factory paymaster and hisguard at South Braintree, Mass., in 1920.While the appeal from the sentence was under consideration by GovernorFuller last summer, I offered to make the tests. The pistol in question wasa .32 caliber Colt automatic; Sacco had admitted its possession. While theprosecution and its experts had contended that at least one of six bulletsfrom the bodies of the murdered men had issued from that weapon, thedefense with equal vigor had denied this contention.My sole purpose, in the interest of justice, was to establish the truth of the matter by the unbiased evidence of science. The offer was made firstto the defense, which declined it; then to the prosecution, whichaccepted. Entirely irrespective of the guilt or innocence of the defendants,or whether they received fair trial, the test established beyondcontradiction these two long-disputed points:
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