The sampling library, also known as “Edna”, was first shown in the season six premiere of CSI: NY, “Epilogue”. Dr Sheldon Hawkes (Hill Harper) used the machine to identify a piece of tempered glass retrieved from a healed wound on the victim’s shoulder. “What she does is gather information,” Kelsey said of the machine. “There are thirty thousand slides here, and she retracts one of them that’s going to be examined by a technician.”

“A lot of people think this is all computer-run,” Kelsey continued. In reality, the machine is controlled by two human operators. “We’re the people that try to do those things that make people say, ‘How’d they do that?’” he added. “Specifically, anything that the production can’t buy or rent, we will actually make.” That includes the sampling library. “I think the hardest part of my job is getting everything done correctly on time,” he said. “In our business, it only has to work really really well for about a minute or two, but in that minute or two, you have to not fail.”

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