Digital replicas of the bullets that killed the Irish American 35th President of the United States, JFK, will be added to the National Archive's online records.
The United States National Archives plans to make detailed 3D computer models of the bullets that assassinated President John F Kennedy, on that fateful November day in 1963. These digital replicas will then be available to the public next year.
The National Archive's President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records includes more than five million pages of documents as well as photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings, and physical artifacts. These 3-D bullet renders will be available as part of the online archive in early 2020, though the exact date hasn’t been finalized.
Read more: Caroline Kennedy christens new aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy
The models will include two bullets that hit Kennedy and a third that hit both Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally, who was seated in front of the president in the Dallas motorcade. The collection will also include two bullets that were fired from the gun recovered from the crime scene, in order to test its general handling and ballistic properties.
The final bullet included will be one retrieved from Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination attempt on Major General Edwin Walker, with the same weapon used in the Kennedy killing seven months later.
Martha Murphy, Chief for Special Access in the National Archives, explained in a video announcement that over years researchers had requested access to the bullets but there were preservation concerns due to their fragility.
She said, "This is one of the most significant events of the 20th century for Americans, and it is something that just continues to have interest for the public."
Researchers' interest over the years is what prompted Murphy to reach out to the National Institute of Standards and Technology in an effort to digitize the bullets. Murphy maintains that these digital renders will be even more useful to research as they can be rotated and were rendered with a lateral resolution of four micrometers and a vertical resolution of 0.5 micrometers.
She added "You’re going to see every groove in the bullet, every nick. It’s going to be a very true representation of the original."
What do you think of this new addition to the archives? Does it interest you? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
WATCH: Color footage of President Kennedy’s historic 1963 visit to Ireland
Comments