The first crime lab was operated from just a single room and employed just one full-time employee. Agent Charles Appel was that employee and he began with little more than a borrowed microscope. He did have a device called a helixometer, this device was supposed to assist investigators with examinations of gun barrels but was in fact more for show than any actual scientific function.

The head of the FBI at that time J. Edgar Hoover, provided very few resources for the lab. The ‘cutting edge lab’ was used primarily as a public relations tool. By 1938 the FBI lab had grown in size, adding polygraph machines (or lie detectors) and started to conduct in using controversial lie detection tests as part of its investigations. In those early days the FBI’s crime lab worked on only about 200 pieces of evidence a year. Over the years it has grown considerably and by the 1990’s the annual number of pieces of evidence to be examined had risen to around 200,000. Current figures show that the FBI’s Crime Lab has something like 600 new pieces of evidence to sift through and examine everyday. A long way from that one room with a sink operation 78 years ago in 1932.