-
1000 BCE
Fingerprints are used
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. -
Fingerprint patterns are noticed
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. -
Sir William Herschel
However, fingerprints weren't used as a method for identifying criminals until the 19th century. In 1858, an Englishman named Sir William Herschel was working as the Chief Magistrate of the Hooghly district in Jungipoor, India. In order to reduce fraud, he had the residents record their fingerprints when signing business documents. -
THE SCIENCE OF FINGERPRINTING, 19TH CENTURY
Sir William Herschel, An English magistrate in Jungipoor, India, used handprints as a kind of signature in all contracts from 1858 onwards. After experimenting, he realised the whole hand was not necessary and fingerprints were enough, and he spearheaded the creation of a finger register in the region -
FINGERPRINTS GO DIGITAL
the first computer databases of fingerprints were developed in the early 1980s following research initiatives across Japan, the UK, France and the US. These systems came to be known as Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems Australia’s National Automated Fingerprint Identification System was not established until 1986, the year after Mr Stinky was finally caught. He could, therefore, have proved harder to apprehend, -
fingerprints on clay
A few years later, Scottish doctor Henry Faulds was working in Japan when he discovered fingerprints left by artists on ancient pieces of clay. This finding inspired him to begin investigating fingerprints -
Alphonse Bertillion, a French anthropologist
devised method of body measurements to produce a formula used to classify individuals. This formula involves taking the measurements of a persons body parts, and recording these measurements on a card. This method of classifying and identifying people became known as the Bertillion System. -
FINGERPRINTS CATCH CRIMINALS IN SOUTH AMERICA
Juan Vucetich, an Argentine police official, rejected the Bertillon system and began developing an alternative system of fingerprint identification, in 1891. A year later, fingerprinting exposed a woman who had murdered her own sons and made elaborate efforts to cover her tracks. -
Juan Vucetich
Argentine Police Official, Initiated the fingerprinting of criminals, (First case used was the Rojas Homicide in 1892, in which the print of a woman who murdered her two sons and cut her own throat in an attempt to place the blame on another person was found on a door post) -
FINGERPRINTING IS ADOPTED IN THE UK, AUSTRALIA AND THE USA
Sir Edward Henry, an Inspector General of Police in Bengal, India, developed a fingerprint classification system in 1901. The Henry Classification System was used in criminal investigations throughout British India and England adopted the system in 1902.
