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44 BCE
Assassination of Julius Cesar
Doctor performed an autopsy on Cesar, confirming his death by one fatal wound out of 23. -
400
Law made - Cause of Death
A law was made by Germanic and Slavic societies which stated that in crimes, medical experts must be the ones to determine the cause of death. -
600
Fingerprints
This marks when fingerprints were first used for identification. It was used by Arabic merchants. -
1248
1st Forensic Science Book
The Chinese published the first ever forensic science manual. -
Reporting Cases
Publishing of the first pathology reports. -
Physical Evidence
First recorded case of the physical match of evidence lead to the murder conviction of John Toms in England. The evidence was a torn edge of a newspaper in a pistol that matched the newspaper found in his pocket. -
Poisoning
Valentin Ross, a German chemist developed a method to detect arsenic in a victim's stomach. -
More Physical Evidence
Forensic work heightens. The clothing and shoes of a farm laborer were examined and found to match the evidence of a nearby murder scene where a young woman drowned in a shallow pool. -
Chemical Testing
An English chemist named James Marsh used chemical processes to determine arsenic as the cause of death in a murder trial. -
Photos
Between 1854-1859, San Francisco became the first city in the U.S. to use photography for criminal identification. -
Fingerprints
Henry Faulds and William James Herschel publish a paper about fingerprints. A scientist named Francis Galton adapted their findings in court. Findings included: plain arch, tented arch and lateral pocket loop, among others. -
Fingerprint ID
Juan Vucetich, an Argentinian police officer is the first ever to use fingerprints as evidence in a murder investigation. He termed it dactyloscopy. -
Blood Markers
Karl Landsteiner discovers the human blood grouping, ABO and it is adapted for use on bloodstains by Dieter Max Richter. -
Fingerprint ID
The Galton Henry system of fingerprint identification becomes the most widely used fingerprinting method to date. -
Fingerprint Prisoner
The New York state prison system implements fingerprint identification. -
Forensic Learning
The first school of forensic science is founded by Rodolphe Archibald Reiss in Switzerland. -
Hair
The first study on hair is published by Victor Balthazard and Marcelle Lambert. Microscopic studies done on most animals and the first legal case ever involving hair took place. -
Guns
Victor Balthazard developed several methods of matching bullets to guns by photography due to realizing that tools used to make gun barrels never leave the same markings, and individual gun barrels leave identifying grooves on each bullet fired through it. -
Crime Labs
In Los Angeles the first police crime lab is established. -
Lie Detection
John Larson invented the prototype polygraph in 1921 to be used in police stations. -
Lab
FBI establishes its very own crime lab, one of the foremost in the world. -
Voice Recording
The discovery of a sound spectrograph was made, with the ability to record voices. Voiceprints began to be used in investigations as phone evidence. These came from phones, answering machines or tape recorders.