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200 BCE
BC 200s - China
Chinese records from the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) include details about using handprints as evidence during burglary investigations. -
Period: 200 BCE to
The History of Fingerprinting - Forensics
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Herschel
The English began using fingerprints in July 1858 when Sir William James Herschel, Chief Magistrate of the Hooghly District in Jungipoor, India, first used fingerprints on native contracts. On a whim, and without thought toward personal identification, Herschel had Rajyadhar Konai, a local businessman, impress his hand print on a contract. -
The Bertillion System
Alphonse Bertillion, a French anthropologist, devised method of body measurements to produce
a formula used to classify individuals. This formula involves taking the measurements of a persons
body parts, and recording these measurements on a card. This method of classifying and identifying
people became known as the Bertillion System. -
Juan Vucetich
Argentine Police Official, Initiated the fingerprinting of criminals, (First case used was the Rojas
Homicide in 1892, in which the print of a woman who murdered her two sons and cut her own throat in an attempt to
place the blame on another person was found on a door post) -
First system of classifying fingerprints developed
Sir Edward Henry, an Inspector General of Police in Bengal, India, develops the first system of classifying
fingerprints. This system of classifying fingerprints. This system of classifying fingerprints was first adopted as the official
system in England, and eventually spread throughout -
The Will West case
In 1903, the New York City Civil Service Commission, the New York State Prison System and the Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas were using fingerprinting.
In 1903, Will and William West's fingerprints were compared at Leavenworth Penitentiary after they were found to have very similar Anthropometric measurements. -
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 (originally including a total of 810,188 fingerprint cards). -
The Fingerprint Society
In 1974, four employees of the Hertfordshire (United Kingdom) Fingerprint Bureau contacted fingerprint experts throughout the UK and began organization of that country's first professional fingerprint organization, the National Society of Fingerprint Officers. The organization initially consisted of only UK experts, but quickly expanded to international scope and was renamed The Fingerprint Society in 1977. -
Neurium declaration
At the International Symposium on Latent Fingerprint Detection and Identification, conducted by the Israeli National Police Agency, at Neurim, Israel, June, 1995, the Neurim Declaration was issued. The declaration, (authored by Pierre Margot and Ed German), states "No scientific basis exists for requiring that a pre-determined minimum number of friction ridge features must be present in two impression in order to establish a positive identification."
