-
700 BCE
Thumb Prints on Record
The Chinese would record thumb prints in clay and on documents. There was no classification system as of yet. -
250 BCE
First Lie Detector Test
Erasistratus, an ancient Greek physician, created the first lie detector test after he noticed an increase pulse rate when his patients were lying. -
44 BCE
Caesar's Autopsy
An autopsy was performed after Julius Caesar's assassination that revealed that only one of the 23 stab wounds was fatal. -
400
Medical Experts Determine Cause of Death
A law was made in German and Slavic societies requiring that medical experts determine the cause of death after a crime has been committed. -
600
Fingerprints
Arabic merchants would take debtor's fingerprints as a source of identity. -
1248
First Forensics Manual Published
The first known record of using medical knowledge to solve cases was published in China. -
Cases Reported
Pathology reports began to be published. -
Physical Evidence Leads to Conviction
The first recorded incident involving the use of physical evidence in a criminal case. The pistol wad found in the gunshot wound matched the newspaper found in suspect John Toms pocket leading to the murder conviction. -
Detecting Arsenic
The investigation of deaths by poison were made easier by a German chemist named Valentin Ross who developed a method for detecting arsenic in the walls of the victim's stomach. -
Identification by Photograph
San Francisco becomes the first city in the United States to use photographs for criminal identification. -
Fingerprint Identification as Evidence
Twelve years after fingerprints were found to be unique, an Argentinean police officer named Juan Vucetich used fingerprints as evidence in a murder case. He also created the dactyloscopy, a fingerprint identification system. -
Blood Markers in Investigation
Dieter Max Richter adapted Karl Landsteiner's discovery of human blood groups for use on blood stains. -
Fingerprint Idetification Becomes More Common
Scotland Yard begins to officially use the Galton-Henry system of fingerprint identification. This is still the most widely used system used today. -
Uhelenhuth Test
Invented by Paul Uhelenhuth, this antigen-antibody precipitin test could differentiate human blood from animal blood. -
First Crime Lab
The first police crime lab was built in Los Angles. -
Polygraphs
John Larson invented a prototype polygraph, or lie detector, in 1921. This was later developed further for use in police stations. -
National Crime Information Center
The National Crime Information Center was developed by the FBI as a computerized filing system. -
DNA Fingerprinting
Sir Alec Jeffreys develops DNA fingerprinting techniques. -
Unabomber
One of the most famous, longest, and expensive FBI cases of all times was not solved through crime scene investigation. Ted Kaczynski, known in the FBI as UNABOM (University and Airplane Bomber), would plant fake clues on the package bombs he mailed from 1978 to 1995 to mislead investigators. He was only caught by using linguistic forensics. -
4 Second Dental X-Ray Matching System
A system developed by Japanese researches can create a positive match to any dental x-ray in a database in less than four seconds. -
Facial Sketches to Mug Shots
A software program designed at Michigan State University automatically matches facial sketches to mug shots
