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221 BCE
Chinese Hand Prints
Chinese used hand prints as evidence during burglary investigations. -
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London
Dr. Nehemiah Grew was the first European to publish friction ridge skin observations -
Anatomy of the Human Body
Dutch anatomist Govard Bidloo's 1685 book, "Anatomy of the Human Body" included descriptions of friction ridge skin details -
Johann Christoph Andreas
German anatomist Johann Christoph Andreas Mayer wrote the book Anatomical Copper-plates with Appropriate Explanations containing drawings of friction ridge skin patterns. -
Jan Evangelista Purkinje
In 1823, Jan Evangelista Purkinje, anatomy professor at the University of Breslau, published his thesis discussing nine fingerprint patterns. -
Mark Twain
In Mark Twain's book, "Life on the Mississippi," a murderer was identified by the use of fingerprint identification. -
Sir Francis Galton
Sir Francis Galton, British anthropologist and a cousin of Charles Darwin, began his observations of fingerprints as a means of identification in the 1880's. -
Juan Vucetich
Juan Vucetich, an Argentine Police Official, began the first fingerprint files based on Galton pattern types. -
1892 - Alvarez & Galton
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. -
India's Fingerprint Pioneers
On 12 June 1897, the Council of the Governor General of India approved a committee report that fingerprints should be used for the classification of criminal records. -
The Fingerprint Branch
The Fingerprint Branch at New Scotland Yard was created in July 1901. It used the Henry System of Fingerprint Classification. -
Dr. Henry Pelouze de Forest
Dr. Henry Pelouze de Forest pioneered the first American use of fingerprints. The fingerprints were used to screen New York City civil service applicants. -
U.S. Army begins using fingerprints.
U.S. Department of Justice forms the Bureau of Criminal Identification in Washington, DC to provide a centralized reference collection of fingerprint cards -
Electronic Encoding of Fingerprints - Denmark Police
In 1914, Hakon Jrgensen with the Copenhagen, Denmark Police lectures about the distant identification of fingerprints at the International Police Conference in Monaco. -
Criminal Identification Operators
Inspector Harry H. Caldwell of the Oakland, California Police Department's Bureau of Identification wrote numerous letters to "Criminal Identification Operators" in August 1915, requesting them to meet in Oakland for the purpose of forming an organization to further the aims of the identification profession. -
Edmond Locard
Edmond Locard wrote that if twelve points were the same between two fingerprints, it would suffice as a positive identification5 -
US Department of Justice Fingerprint Repository Returns to Washington, DC
Following a meeting between the US Attorney General and representatives of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), the US Department of Justice BCI fingerprint collection was transferred from Leavenworth Penitentiary back to Washington, DC, in October 1923. -
INTERPOL's Automated Fingerprint Identification System
INTERPOL's Automated Fingerprint Identification System repository exceeds 150,000 sets of fingerprints for important international criminal records from 190 member countries. Over 170 countries have 24 x 7 interface ability with INTERPOL expert fingerprint services. -
100th Anniversary
The International Association for Identification celebrated it's 100th Anniversary -
America's Largest Databases
he Department of Homeland Security's Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM was formerly US-VISIT), contains over 120 million persons' fingerprints, many in the form of two-finger records.
