-
1248
First Forensic Science Book
First forensic science manual published by the Chinese. This was the first known record of medical knowledge being used to solve criminal cases. -
First Physical Evidence
First recorded 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. -
First Used Photos
San Francisco uses photos to identify a criminal, the first city in the US to do that. -
Fingerprints Found to be Unique
Henry Faulds and William James Herschel publish a paper describing the uniqueness of fingerprints. -
Fingerprint Identification
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 is known as dactyloscopy. -
First Fingerprint Prisoner Identification Used
NY state prison system implemented fingerprint identification. -
Hair Used in Forensics
Victor Balthazard and Marcelle Lambert publish first study on hair. -
Voice Recording Used as Evidence
A sound spectrograph discovered to record voices. Voiceprints started to be used in investigations and as court evidence from recordings of phones, answering machines, or tape recorders. -
Footwear Detection System
Britain's Forensic Science Service develops online footwear coding and detection system. This helps police to identify footwear marks quickly. -
Facial Sketches
Michigan state university develops software that automatically matches hand-drawn facial sketches to mug shots stored in databases. -
Dental Match
Japanese researchers develop a dental x-ray matching system. This system can automatically match dental x-rays in a database, and makes a positive match in less than 4 seconds.