Part of the National Archives and Record Administration’sdutyis to ply the world with accession to its billions of pages of texts , maps , pic , film , and other artifacts of American history — but some of them are n’t so easy to view . The hummer fromJohn F. Kennedy ’s assassination , for exemplar , have long been considered too fragile for anything but sit down in a climate - controlled burial vault in Washington , D.C.
However , they latterly took a field trip to the National Institute of Standards and Technology ( NIST ) in Gaithersburg , Maryland , where the ballistic trajectory squad there used advanced microscopical project techniques to create breathtakingly accurate 3D digital replicas .
fit in to apress releasefrom NIST , the collection includes two fragment from the bullet that killed Kennedy , the so - telephone “ stretcher fastball ” that hit both Kennedy and then - governor of Texas , John Connally ; two bullets from a test - fire of the assassin ’s rifle , and a bullet train from an earlier unsuccessful assassination attempt on Army Major General Edwin Walker that might have come from the same rifle .
As you may probably imagine , the two fragment from Kennedy ’s fatal heater are the most touching piece of the collection . They also give you a middling good understanding of how difficult it must have been to recreate them — the bit of metal are twist around into grumble , asymmetric frame that look unlike from every slant .
To repeat each miniscule mark , ridgeline , and divot , NIST strong-arm scientist Thomas Brian Renegar and Mike Stocker spent hours revolve the artifact beneath the microscope , get mental image from all view , and then combining parts of the picture to make full 3D versions of them .
“ It was like solving a super - complicated 3D teaser , ” Renegar said in the release . “ I ’ve star at them so much I can draw them from retentiveness . ”
Kennedy ’s assassination on November 22 , 1963 , has generate no little number ofconspiracy theoriesover the twelvemonth , but NIST and the National Archives made it light that the project to duplicate the bullets was “ stringently a thing of historic preservation , ” and not in any way a reopening of the case . But once the complete three-D CAT scan are made available in the National Archives ’ on-line catalog in early 2020 , extremity of the public are free to analyse them however they like .
“ The practical artifact are as close as possible to the material things , ” Martha Murphy , the National Archives ’ surrogate director of government information services , say in the release . “ In some respects , they are ripe than the archetype in that you may zoom in to see microscopic details . ”
And while Kennedy ’s case is close , the cut - edge technology used on his bullets will be used in the futurity .
“ The techniques we arise to image those artefact will be utile in reprehensible cases that involve similarly challenging grounds , ” NIST forensic firearms expert Robert Thompson said in the release .
