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All throughout history, fingerprints were used on official documents. They were used like a signature in places like ancient Babylon, China, Nova Scotia, and Persia.
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A professor at the University of Bologna, in Italy, named Macello Malpighi noticed that fingerprints had common patters. Loops, whorls, arches, and ridges seemed to make up most fingerprints. -
A different professor named Johannes Evengelista Purkinje documented nine specific patterns to help identify types of fingerprints. -
A magistrate in India named William Herschel began using fingerprinting as a way to make natives "sign" a contract. After several contracts, he began noticing that no two fingerprints were the same and fingerprints could be used for identification purposes. -
A doctor in Tokyo became very interested in fingerprinting. Dr. Henry Faulds used fingerprints to identify who had left a stray bottle lying around he matched fingerprints left on the bottle with a laboratory worker. -
Using a bloody fingerprint left on a doorframe, police in Argentina were able to identify a murderer. During the same year, certain police groups started keeping fingerprint files. -
The use of fingerprints was slow to catch on from country to country. After Argentina, British India took up the practice.
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After the success in Argentina and India, Scotland Yard began questioning whether it would be a useful system for England. The Scotland Yard Fingerprint Bureau was founded.
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Paris police began keeping fingerprints of criminals on file. After a murder was committed, police found a fingerprint at the scene and compared it against their files; they were able to identify the killer. -
The New York Police Department, and others across the state, began using fingerprints as a way to identify people. Over the next few years, the practice slowly spread westward. -
Over time, the Army, Navy, and Marines began using fingerprinting. The National Bureau of Criminal Investigation also began keeping track of the fingerprints on file.
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation took over the cataloguing of fingerprints in America. By 1971 they had over 200 million fingerprints on file.
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With the advancement in technology, programs began using Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems. The AFIS's scanned and stored fingerprints electronically. -
Law enforcement groups saw the need to fingerprint children as a means of identifying kids who became lost, or went missing. Christ Migliaro founded Fingerprint America for this purpose.
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Through a long process, the FBI began transferring their fingerprint file to an electronic system. Millions of criminal fingerprints are now stored across the globe.