DNA Fingerprinting History

The name is Archimedes. When he was alive, there was a king with a magnificent gold crown. There was speculation that the crow was actually made out of sliver and colored gold. The king hired Archimedes to find out the truth about the crown. Archimedes, using primitive DNA profiling, figured out the truth about the crown. It in fact was made of silver.

Lead forward over 2000 years to 1890. A French police man named Alphonse Betillon creates the first documented system of what would become DNA profiling. He stated that the measurements of 11 of your body parts being equal to someone else's 11 measurements was 1 in 250 million. Some of these parts were your head, arms, legs, feet, hands and so on.

This discovery was the basis for DNA profiling. In 1894, scientists discovered that everyone's fingerprints were different. This finding was now added into Betillon's system. In 1920, Edmond Locard, a French criminalist, founded the first crime lab in France. About a decade later, there were crime labs located all over Europe. The US figured that they better do something quick to stay ahead with criminalistic science. In 1923, the first US crime lab was opened in Los Angeles, California. It took the US 11 more years to declare a federal crime lab. In 1932, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI opened the first federal crime lab.

Today, we have over 400 crime labs with over 40,000 forensic and criminalistic scientists. These scientists also now have much more technology to help solve cases like radioactive probes.