ABSTRACT
John H. Fisher, another ex-National Bureau of Standards (NBS) physicist, invented a device essential for forensic firearms identification. Both of their contributions were important in major criminal trials and made a sizable impact on the justice system. Fisher worked at the independent Bureau of Forensic Ballistics, established in 1925, where he invented the helixometer to peer inside the barrel of a firearm without sawing it in half lengthwise. Weapons identification was likewise essential in another world-famous trial. In 1921, two Italian-born anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were convicted of shooting and killing two men during an armed robbery in Massachusetts. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers found that in 1932 he was already calling for standards to be established for forensics equipment, for precise forensic data and its detailed recording, and for stringent testing to qualify forensics experts.
