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Fingerprint Formula
Around 1870, French anthropologist Alphonse Bertillon devised a system to measure and record the dimensions of certain bony parts of the body. These measurements were reduced to a formula which, theoretically, would apply only to one person and would not change during his/her adult life. Bertillon also invented the concept of arrest photographs (mugshots) made at the same time bodily measurements and fingerprints were recorded. -
Fingerprint Book
Sir Francis Galton, a British Anthropologist and cousin to Charles Darwin, publishes the first book on fingerprints.
In his book, Galton identifies the individuality and uniqueness of fingerprints. The unique characteristics of fingerprints, as
identified by Galton, will officially become known as minutiae, however they are sometimes still referred to as Galton’s
Details. -
Fingerprint identification
At Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1892, Inspector Eduardo Alvarez made the first criminal fingerprint identification. He was able to identify Francisca Rojas, a woman who murdered her two sons and cut her own throat in an attempt to place blame on another. Her bloody print was left on a door post, proving her identity as the murderer. Alvarez was trained by Juan Vucetich. -
Sydney School of Arts
On 8 May 1896, Dr. Ralph Hodgson gave a lecture on the value of fingerprint identification at the Sydney School of Arts in Sydney, Australia. The lecture included discussion of the great value of fingerprints and also the limited adoption of fingerprint records for identification by worldwide agencies already using Bertillon measurements. -
Will West and William West at a Federal Prison in Leavenworth, Kansas
The William West/Will West Case, changed the way that people
were classified and identified when a man named Will West entered the Leavenworth Prison inmates. Upon completion of this process, it was noted that another inmate, known as William West, who was already incarcerated at Leavenworth, had the same name,
Bertillon measurements. It turns out that they were identical twins.
After 1903, many prison systems began to use fingerprints as the primary means of identification. -
Adopting the use of Fingerprints
U.S. Military adopts the use of fingerprints – soon thereafter, police agencies began to adopt the use of
fingerprints -
Fingerprints are now a reliable use of identification
Dec. 21, 1911, Thomas Jennings was the first person to be convicted of murder in the United States based on fingerprint evidence. Jennings appealed his conviction to the Illinois Supreme Court on the basis of a questionable new scientific technique. The Illinois Supreme Court cited the historical research and use of fingerprints as a means of reliable identification in upholding the conviction, and thus establishing the use of fingerprints as a reliable means of identification. -
Edmond Locard
Edmond Locard wrote that if twelve points (Galton's Details) were the same between two fingerprints, it would suffice as a positive identification. Locard's twelve points seems to have been based on an unscientific "improvement" over the eleven anthropometric measurements (arm length, height, etc.) used to "identify" criminals before the adoption of fingerprints. -
FBI Identification Division formed
In 1924, an act of congress established the Identification Division of the FBI. The IACP's Bureau of Criminal Identification fingerprint repository and the US Justice Department's Bureau of Criminal Identification fingerprint repository were consolidated to form the nucleus of the FBI Identification Division fingerprint files. During the decades since, the FBI's fingerprint national fingerprint support has been indispensable in supporting American law enforcement. -
Computer database of Fingerprints developed
First computer data base of fingerprints was developed, which came to be known as the Automated Fingerprint
Identification System, (AFIS). In the present day, there nearly 70 million cards, or nearly 700 million individual
fingerprints entered in AFIS
