-
400
Who determines cause of death
Germanic and Slavic societies made law that medical experts must be the ones to determine cause of death in crimes -
600
Use of fingerprints for the first time
Fingerprints first used to determine identity. Arabic merchants would take a debtor's fingerprint and attach it to the bill. -
Reporting cases
First pathology reports published. -
Physical evidence used in criminal case
First recorded instance of physical matching of evidence leading to a murder conviction. Evidence was a torn edge of newspaper in a pistol that matched newspaper in his pocket. -
Investigating poisoning
German chemist Valentin Ross developed a method of detecting arsenic in a victim's stomach, thus advancing the investigation of poison deaths. -
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. -
Chemical testing utilized
James Marsh, an English chemist, uses chemical processes to determine arsenic as the cause of death in a murder trial. -
First uses of photos in identification
San Francisco uses photography for criminal identification, the first city in the US to do so. -
Fingerprints found to be unique
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. -
Investigations into blood markers
Human blood grouping, ABO, discovered by Karl Landsteiner and adapted for use on bloodstains by Dieter Max Richter. -
Learning about forensics
First school of forensic science founded by Rodolphe Archibald Reiss, in Switzerland. -
Hair now used in forensics
Victor Balthazard and Marcelle Lambert publish the first study on hair, including microscopic studies from most animals. First legal case ever involving hair also took place following this study -
Guns are unique
Victor Balthazard realizes 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. He developed several methods of matching bullets to guns via photography. -
Crime labs built
First police crime lab established in Los Angele -
Lie detection
Prototype polygraph, which was invented by John Larson in 1921, developed for use in police station -
Voice recording, used as evidence
A sound spectrograph discovered to be able to record voices. Voiceprints began to be used in investigations and as court evidence from recordings of phones, answering machines, or tape recorders. -
First national crime system
FBI established the National Crime Information Center, a computerized national filing system on wanted people, stolen vehicles and weapons. -
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, and can show how close that suspect was to the gun. -
Advanced manual fingerprints
First fingerprint reader installed at the FBI -
Auto fingerprint system first used
Royal Canadian Mounted Police implement first automatic fingerprint identification system. -
DNA technique for unique ID
DNA fingerprinting techniques developed by Sir Alec Jeffreys. -
DNA catches the criminal
Tommy Lee Andrews convicted of a series of sexual assaults, using DNA profiling. -
DNA evidence certified
National Academy of Sciences announces DNA evidence is reliable. -
Faster fingerprint IDs
FBI establishes the integrated automated fingerprint identification system, cutting down fingerprint inquiry response from two weeks to two hours. -
Footwear detection system
Britain's Forensic Science Service develops online footwear coding and detection system. This helps police to identify footwear marks quickly. -
Detection after cleaning
A way for scientists to visualize fingerprints even after the print has been removed is developed, relating to how fingerprints can corrode metal surfaces. -
Facial sketches matched to photos
Michigan state university develops software that automatically matches hand-drawn facial sketches to mug shots stored in databases. -
Period: to
History of forensics