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Jan Evangelist Purkyn invented the differing categories of fingerprints that we know today. -
Sir William Herschel began collecting fingerprints in 1856, and later noted the patterns were unique to each person and weren't altered by age. -
The first case of a criminal being fingerprinted was the Rojas homicide, after Juan Vucetich proposed it -
Sir Edmund Richard Henry with the help of two colleagues created a system and invented a better way of collecting impressions. They are divided based on whether they are classified as a arch, whorl, or loop pattern. -
In two different prisons there were two different men named William West. They had a striking resemblance to each other, and the same Bertillon measurements. The event made people realize that there was a need for a more secure means of identification. -
1911 marks the first time that fingerprints were used as admissible evidence in a court case. It was determined that it was a reliable form of identification. -
The International Association for Criminal Identification was founded in the USA. Following their founding they would almost exclusively use fingerprints as a form of identification. -
In 1937 the first machine was invented to sort through differing fingerprints more efficiently. The next development would be in 1950 with the invention of the punch card which would search at a rate of 450 cards per minute. -
By this time the FBI had now had nearly 200,000,000 fingerprints that were being kept, almost 50,000,000 of them were criminal. -
The Unique Identification Authority of India is the world's largest fingerprint system, and they use fingerprint, face, and iris biometric records to correctly identify citizens, as well as criminals.