Forensic Science Project

By kodymorrell
  • 400

    Cause of Death

    In order to determine the cause of death at the scene of the crime, German and Slavic societies decided that it should be medical experts that review and determine the cause of death.
  • 600

    Use of fingerprints for the first time

    For the first time, fingerprints are used. They were used by Arabic merchants who would take debtor’s fingerprint and attach it to a bill
  • 1248

    First forensic science book

    The first forensic science manual gets published by the Chinese, which led to it being the first use of medical knowledge used to solve criminal cases.

  • Physical evidence used in criminal case

    Physical matching of evidence was first recorded during the conviction of John Toms, England. The evidence that was used was a piece of a newspaper that was in the pistol that matched to the newspaper that he had in his pocket.

  • Investigating poisoning

    Valentin Ross who was a German chemist, developed a way to detect if there is arsenic in the victim’s stomach, which led to the advancement of investigating poison deaths.

  • Chemical testing utilized

    An English chemist named James Marsh used a chemical process in order to determine that arsenic was the cause of death during the trial.

  • First uses of photos in identification

    The first city in the US to use photography for criminal identification was San Francisco.

  • Fingerprints found to be unique

    Henry Faulds and William James Herchel find out that fingerprints are unique, and they decide to publish a paper on it. A scientist named Francis Galton then used and adapted their information in court to describe the different patterns.

  • Sherlock Holmes and the coroner

    The Coroner’s act was established, and it was used to determine unnatural deaths. Also in the same year, Arthur Conan Doyle published Sherlock Holmes.

  • Criminal features reduced to numerical measurements

    A system that uses various measures of physical features and bones, known as anthropometry is used throughout Europe and the US.

  • Fingerprint ID used in crime

    An Argentinean police officer known as Juan Vucetich used fingerprints as evidence in the murder investigation for the first time. The fingerprint identification that he created was then called dactyloscopy.

  • Investigations into blood markers

    Karl Landsteiner discovered ABO and used it on bloodstains by Dieter Max Richter.

  • Fingerprint ID more common

    Scotland Yard used the fingerprint identification system made by Galton-Henry. It then becomes the most widely used fingerprint method.

  • First fingerprint prisoner ID used

    Fingerprint identification system implemented in NY state prison.

  • Learning about forensics

    Rodolphe Archibald Reiss founded the first school of forensic science in Switzerland.

  • Hair now used in forensics

    The first legal case ever to involve hair took place after the study derived from Victor Balthazard and Marcelle Lambert was published.

  • Guns are unique

    Victor Balthazard discovers that gun barrels don’t leave the same markings after the bullet is fired. He developed several of these methods, by using photography.

  • Lie detection

    John Larson’s prototype polygraph that he invented in 1921 gets developed for use in police stations.

  • Crime experts build lab

    Harvard establishes a chair of legal medicine. The FBI establishes a crime laboratory.

  • Voice recording, used as evidence

    Voiceprints began to be used in investigations and as court evidence after a sound spectrograph was discovered to be able to record voices.

  • First national crime system

    National Crime Information Center is established by the FBI, which is used to file wanted people, weapons, etc.

  • Advances in residue detection

    The Aerospace Corporation in the US develops technology that is used to detect gunshot residue, which is then used to determine the suspect and how close they were to the gun

  • Advanced manual fingerprints

    FBI installs the first fingerprint reader.

  • Auto fingerprint system first used

    The first automatic fingerprint identification system is implemented by Royal Canadian Mountain Police.

  • DNA technique for unique ID

    Sir Alec Jeffereys developed DNA fingerprinting techniques.

  • Advances in DNA lead to conviction

    Colin Pitchfork is convicted of murdering two teenage girls after DNA fingerprinting was used. This cleared the main suspect of the case.

  • DNA catches the criminal

    DNA profiling leads to the conviction of Tommy Lee Andrews.

  • DNA evidence certified

    DNA evidence is deemed reliable by the National Academy of Sciences.

  • Faster fingerprint IDs

    Fingerprint inquiry response cutdown from 2 weeks to 2 hours with the integrated automated fingerprint identification established by the FBI.

  • Footwear detection system

    Online footwear coding and detection system developed by Britain’s Forensic Science Survey helps identify footprints more quickly.