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The
History of Fingerprints
Updated
8 May 2005
Why Fingerprint Identification?
Fingerprints offer an infallible
means of personal identification. That is the essential explanation for
their having supplanted other methods of establishing the identities of
criminals reluctant to admit previous arrests. Other personal
characteristics change - fingerprints do not.
In earlier civilizations,
branding and
even maiming were used to mark the criminal for what he was. The thief
was
deprived of the hand which committed the thievery. The Romans employed
the
tattoo needle to identify and prevent desertion of mercenary soldiers.
More recently, law enforcement
officers with extraordinary visual memories, so-called "camera eyes,"
identified
old offenders by sight. Photography lessened the burden on memory but
was
not the answer to the criminal identification problem. Personal
appearances
change.
Around 1870 a French
anthropologist devised a system to measure and record the dimensions of
certain bony parts of the body. These measurements were reduced to a
formula which, theoretically, would apply only to one person and would
not change during his/her adult life.
This Bertillon System, named
after its
inventor, Alphonse Bertillon, was generally accepted for thirty years.
But
it never recovered from the events of 1903, when a man named Will West
was
sentenced to the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas. You see,
there was already a prisoner at the penitentiary at the time, whose
Bertillon measurements were nearly the same, and his name was William
West.
Upon an investigation, there were
indeed two men who looked exactly alike, but were allegedly not
related. Their names were Will and William West respectively. Their
Bertillon measurements were close enough to identify them as the same
person. However, a fingerprint comparison quickly and correctly
identified them as two different people. (Per
prison records discovered later, the West men were apparently
identical twin brothers and each had a record of
correspondence with the same
immediate
family relatives.)
Prehistoric
Picture writing of a hand with
ridge patterns was discovered in Nova Scotia. In ancient Babylon,
fingerprints were used on clay tablets for business transactions. In
ancient China, thumb prints were found on clay seals.
In 14th century Persia, various
official government papers had fingerprints (impressions), and one
government official, a doctor, observed that no two
fingerprints were
exactly alike.
1686 - Malpighi
In 1686, Marcello Malpighi,
a
professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna, noted in his
treatise; ridges, spirals and loops in fingerprints. He made no mention
of their value as a tool for individual identification. A layer of skin
was named
after him; "Malpighi" layer, which is approximately 1.8mm thick.
1823
- Purkinji
In 1823, John Evangelist
Purkinji, a
professor of anatomy at the University of Breslau, published his thesis
discussing
9 fingerprint patterns, but he too made no mention of the value of
fingerprints for personal identification.
1856
- Hershel
The English first began
using
fingerprints in July of 1858, when Sir William Herschel, Chief
Magistrate of the Hooghly district in Jungipoor, India, first used
fingerprints on native contracts. On a whim, and with no thought toward
personal identification, Herschel
had Rajyadhar Konai, a local businessman, impress his hand print on the
back of a contract.
The idea was merely ". . .
to
frighten [him] out of all thought of repudiating his signature." The
native was
suitably impressed, and Herschel made a habit of requiring palm
prints--and
later, simply the prints of the right Index and Middle fingers--on
every
contract made with the locals. Personal contact with the document, they
believed, made the contract more binding than if they simply signed it.
Thus,
the first wide-scale, modern-day use of fingerprints was predicated,
not
upon scientific evidence, but upon superstitious beliefs.
As his fingerprint
collection
grew, however, Herschel began to note that the inked impressions could,
indeed, prove or disprove identity. While his experience with
fingerprinting was admittedly limited, Sir Herschel's private
conviction that all fingerprints were unique to the individual, as well
as permanent throughout that individual's life, inspired him to expand
their use.
1880
- Faulds
During the 1870's, Dr. Henry
Faulds,
the British Surgeon-Superintendent of Tsukiji Hospital in Tokyo, Japan,
took up the study of "skin-furrows" after noticing finger marks on
specimens of "prehistoric" pottery. A learned and industrious man, Dr.
Faulds not only recognized the importance of fingerprints as a means of
identification, but
devised a method of classification as well.
In 1880, Faulds forwarded
an
explanation of his classification system and a sample of the forms he
had designed
for recording inked impressions, to Sir Charles Darwin. Darwin, in
advanced age and ill health, informed Dr. Faulds that he could be of no
assistance to him, but promised to pass the materials on to his cousin,
Francis Galton.
Also in 1880, Dr. Faulds
published an
article in the Scientific Journal, "Nautre" (nature). He discussed
fingerprints as a means of personal identification, and the use of
printers ink as a
method for obtaining such fingerprints. He is also credited with the
first
fingerprint identification of a greasy fingerprint left on an alcohol
bottle.
1882 - Thompson
In 1882, Gilbert Thompson of
the
U.S. Geological Survey in New Mexico, used his own fingerprints on a
document to prevent forgery. This is the first known use of
fingerprints in the United States.
1883 - Mark Twain
(Samuel L.
Clemens)
In Mark Twain's book, "Life
on the
Mississippi", a murderer was identified by the use of fingerprint
identification. In a later book by Mark Twain, "Pudd'n Head Wilson",
there was a dramatic court trial on fingerprint identification. A more
recent movie
was made from this book.
1888 - Galton
Sir Francis Galton, a
British
anthropologist and a cousin of Charles Darwin, began his observations
of fingerprints
as a means of identification in the 1880's.
1891 - Vucetich
Juan Vucetich, an
Argentine Police Official, began the first fingerprint files based on
Galton pattern types. At first, Vucetich included the Bertillon System
with the files. (see Bertillon below)
1892 -
Vucetich
& Galton
Juan Vucetich made the
first criminal fingerprint identification in 1892. He was able to
identify a
woman by the name of Rojas, who had murdered her two sons, and cut her
own throat in
an attempt to place blame on another. Her bloody print was left
on a
door post, proving her identity as the murderer.
Sir Francis Galton
published his
book, "Fingerprints", establishing the individuality and permanence of
fingerprints. The book included the first classification system for
fingerprints.
Galton's primary interest
in
fingerprints was as an aid in determining heredity and racial
background. While he soon discovered that fingerprints offered no firm
clues to an individual's intelligence or genetic history, he was able
to scientifically prove what Herschel and Faulds already suspected:
that fingerprints do not change over the course of an individual's
lifetime, and that no two fingerprints are exactly the same. According
to his calculations, the odds of two individual fingerprints being the
same were 1 in 64 billion.
Galton identified the
characteristics by which fingerprints can be identified. These same
characteristics (minutia) are basically still in use today, and are
often referred to as Galton's
Details.
1897 - Haque & Bose
On 12 June 1987, the
Council
of the Governor General of India approved a committee report that
fingerprints should be used for classification of criminal
records. Later that year, the Calcutta (now Kolkata) Anthropometric Bureau became the world's first
Fingerprint Bureau. Working in the Calcutta Anthropometric Bureau
(before it became the Fingerprint Bureau) were Azizul Haque and Hem
Chandra Bose. Haque and Bose are the two Indian fingerprint
experts credited with primary development of the Henry System of
fingerprint classification (named for their supervisor, Edward Richard
Henry). The Henry classification system is still used in all English-speaking countries.
1901 - Henry
Introduction of fingerprints
for
criminal identification in England and Wales, using Galton's
observations and revised by Sir Edwrd Richard Henry.
1902
First systematic use of
fingerprints
in
the U.S. by the New York Civil Service Commission for testing. Dr.
Henry
P. DeForrest pioneers U.S. fingerprinting.
1903
The New York State Prison
system
began the first systematic use of fingerprints in U.S. for
criminals.
1904
The use of fingerprints
began in
Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas, and the St. Louis Police
Department. They were assisted by a Sergeant from Scotland Yard who had
been on duty at
the St. Louis World's Fair Exposition guarding the British
Display. Sometime after the St. Louis World's Fair, the
International Association of Chiefs of Police
1905
U.S. Army begins using
fingerprints.
U.S. Department of Justice forms the Bureau of Criminal Identification
in Washgington, DC to provide a centralized reference collection of
fingerprint cards.
Two years later the U.S. Navy started, and was joined
the next year by the Marine Corp. During the next 25 years more and
more law enforcement agencies join in the use of fingerprints as a
means of personal identification. Many of these agencies began sending
copies of their fingerprint cards
to the National Bureau of Criminal Identification, which was
established
by the International Association of Police Chiefs.
1907
U.S. Navy begins using
fingerprints.
U.S. Department of Justice's
Bureau of Criminal Identification moves to Leavenworth Federal
Penitentiary where it is staffed at least partially by inmates.
1908
U.S. Marin Corps begins
using
fingerprints.
1918
Edmond Locard
wrote that if 12 points (Galton's Details) were the same between two
fingerprints, it would suffice as a positive identification.
Locard's 12 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.
1924
In 1924, an act of congress
established the Identification Division of the F.B.I. The National
Bureau and Leavenworth consolidated to form the nucleus of the F.B.I.
fingerprint files.
1946
By 1946, the F.B.I. had
processed
100 million fingerprint cards in manually maintained files; and by
1971, 200 million cards.
With the introduction of
AFIS
technology, the files were split into computerized criminal files and
manually maintained civil files. Many of the manual files were
duplicates though, the
records actually represented somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 30
million
criminals, and an unknown number of individuals in the civil files.
2004
The FBI's Integrated AFIS
(IAFIS)
in Clarksburg, WVhas more than 46
million individual computerized fingerprint records
for known criminals. Old paper fingerprint cards
for the civil files are still manually maintained in a warehouse
facility (rented shopping center space) in Fairmont, WV, though most
enlisted military service member fingerprint cards received after 1990,
and all military-related fingerprint cards received after 19 May 2000,
have now been computerized and can be searched internally by the
FBI. In some future build of IAFIS, the FBI may make such civil
file AFIS searches available to other federal crime laboratories.
All US states and most
larger
cities have their own AFIS databases, each with a subset of fingerprint
records that is not stored in any other database. Thus, law
enforcement fingerprint interface standards are very important to
enable sharing records and mutual searches for identifying
criminals.
* Much of the wording here was from
Greg Moore's previous fingerprint history page at
http://www.brawleyonline.com/consult/history.htm (no longer there)...
Also, David L. von Minden, Ph.D helped me
correct some typos his students kept cutting and pasting into
their homework.
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