History of Forensic Science

By joshuamartinez433

  • 1892 Fingerprint ID used in crime

    Argentinean police officer, is the first to use fingerprints as evidence in a murder investigation.

  • 1901 Fingerprint ID more common

    Galton-Henry system of fingerprint identification officially used by Scotland Yard, and is the most widely used fingerprinting method to date.

  • 1903 First fingerprint prisoner ID

    NY state prison system implemented fingerprint identification.

  • 1909 Learning about forensics

    First school of forensic science founded by Rodolphe Archibald Reiss, in Switzerland.

  • 1975 Advanced manual fingerprints

    First fingerprint reader installed at the FBI

  • Use of fingerprints for the first time (600s)

    Fingerprints first used to determine identity. Arabic merchants would take a debtor's fingerprint and attach it to the bill.

  • 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.

  • Reporting cases (1600s)

    First pathology reports published.

  • 1784 Physical evidence used in criminal case

    First recorded instance of 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.

  • 1806 Investigating poisoning

    German chemist Valentin Ross developed a method of detecting arsenic in a victim's stomach, thus advancing the investigation of poison deaths.

  • 1816 More physical evidence discovered to work in forensics

    Clothing and shoes of a farm laborer were examined and found to match evidence of a nearby murder scene, where a young woman was found drowned in a shallow pool.

  • 1836 Chemical testing utilized

    James Marsh, an English chemist, uses chemical processes to determine arsenic as the cause of death in a murder trial.

  • 1854 First uses of photos in identification (1854-59 )

    San Francisco uses photography for criminal identification, the first city in the US to do so.

  • 1880 Fingerprints found to be unique

    Henry Faulds and William James Herschel publish a paper describing the uniqueness of fingerprints. Francis Galton, a scientist, adapted their findings for the court. Galton's system identified the following patterns: plain arch, tented arch, simple loop, central pocket loop, double loop, lateral pocket loop, plain whorl, and accidental.

  • 1887 Sherlock Holmes and the coroner

    Coroner's act established that coroners' were to determine the causes of sudden, violent, and unnatural deaths. Arthur Conan Doyle also publishes the first Sherlock Holmes story.

  • 1923 Crime labs built

    First police crime lab established in Los Angeles.

  • 1930 Lie detection

    Invented by John Larson in 1921.

  • 1960 Voice recording

    sound spectrograph discovered to be able to record voices.

  • 1974 Advances in residue detection

    Technology developed at Aerospace Corporation in the US to detect gunshot residue, which can link a suspect to a crime scene.

  • 2007 Footwear detection system

    Britain's Forensic Science Service develops online footwear coding and detection system.