First forensic bullet comparison

In 1835 Henry Goddard (UK) of the early British Police force, the Bow Street Runners, became the first person to use the technique of bullet comparison to solve an active murder enquiry. When a woman known as Mrs Maxwell from Southampton, UK, was shot and killed in her home, her butler Joseph Randall claimed that an exchange of gunfire with burglars had taken place. However, when Goddard examined Randall's gun and ammunition he identified an identical pimple on all the bullets found at the scene, including the ones that killed Mrs Maxwell and which Randall alleged were fired at him. Goddard found a corresponding pinhead-sized hole in the mould from which the bullets had been made, thus proving that the murder had been committed by Randell himself. Bullet examination became a more exacting science in 1920, due to Calvin Goddard (USA) designing a comparison microscope to determine which bullets came from which shell casings.

In the early 1970s, a team of scientists from the Aerospace Corporation in California, USA, developed a method for detecting gunshot residue using scanning electron microscopes. This method is still used today.