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600 AD Use of fingerprints for the first time
Arabic merchants would take a debtor's fingerprint and attach it to the bill. -
1600 reporting cases
First pathology reports published. -
1784 Physical evidence used in criminal case
First recorded instance of physical matching of evidence leading to a murder conviction (John Toms, England). Evidence was a torn edge of newspaper in a pistol that matched newspaper in his pocket. -
1806 Investigating poisoning
German chemist Valentin Ross developed a method of detecting arsenic in a victim's stomach, thus advancing the investigation of poison deaths. -
1836 Chemical Testing Used
James Marsh, an English chemist, uses chemical processes to determine arsenic as the cause of death in a murder trial. -
1880 Fingerprints found to be unique
Henry Faulds and William James Herschel publish a paper describing the uniqueness of fingerprints. Francis Galton, a scientist, adapted their findings for the court. Galton's system identified the following patterns: plain arch, tented arch, simple loop, central pocket loop, double loop, lateral pocket loop, plain whorl, and accidental -
44 BC Julius Caeser is murdered
23 wound marks, only one mark was fatal -
1892 Fingerprint ID used in crime
Juan Vucetich, an Argentinean police officer, is the first to use fingerprints as evidence in a murder investigation. He created a system of fingerprint identification, which he termed dactyloscopy. -
1888 Criminal features reduced to numerical measurements
Anthropometry, a system using various measurements of physical features and bones, used throughout the US and Europe. Using the system, a criminal's information could be reduced to a set of numbers. -
1910 Hair now used in forensics
Victor Balthazard and Marcelle Lambert publish first study on hair, including microscopic studies from most animals. First legal case ever involving hair also took place following this study.
