As I dug into the history of
fingerprinting, I was amazed at how old the art was. Now as writers we are
generally more interested in how fingerprinting is used in crime situations,
but how it all came about should give you an appreciation of it.
It surprised me to learn that the
art of fingerprinting came into being back in 1000-2000 B.C. and was used an
clay tablets for business transactions. My guess is this was their form of a
signature. It was in 14th Century A.D. that a physician notices that
no two fingerprints were alike.
In the 1600’s the microscope was
invented, and in 1686 at the University of Bologna in Italy a professor takes
note of the spirals, loops, and ridges in fingerprints. It was not until 1823
that Johannes Evengelista Purkinje, a professor of anatomy with the University
of Breslau in Prussia, wrote a thesis detailing a full nine different
fingerprint patterns. Fingerprinting was a standard use for identification,
especially on documents and contracts. In 1882 Gilbert Thompson, employed by
the U.S. Geological Survey in New Mexico, uses his fingerprints on a document
to guard against forgery. In the 1800’s Sir Francis Galton started studying
fingerprints and in 1892 published a book, Fingerprints.
It was the first of this type book which detailed the first classification
system called Galton’s Details for fingerprints. This system is still to an
extent used today. This same year Juan Vucetich, an Argentine police official,
started the first fingerprint files based on Galton’s Details. He made history
that year by making the first criminal fingerprint identification.
In 1896 Sir Edward Richard Henry, a
British official instituted a fingerprinting program for all prisoners. In 1902
the Director of the Bureau of Identification of the Paris Police made use of
the first criminal identification of a fingerprint without a known suspect. In
the meantime the testing of the first systematic use of fingerprints in the
U.S. is performed by Dr. Henry P. DeForrest. After that the use of
fingerprinting spreads, and by 1911 the first central storage location for
North America was established in Ottawa by Edward Foster of the Dominion Police
Force. Today it is maintained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. By 1924 the
Identification Division of the F.B.I. was created.
The 1990’s he Automated Fingerprint
Identification Systems had widespread use around the country. Fingerprinting of
children became the vogue by 1996 for investigative purposes.
I was totally amazed that the history
of fingerprinting went back as far as Babylon. Once it was discovered that no
two people have the same fingerprints, the significance quickly accelerated
over the years until law enforcement had one of the most important
investigative tools known to man.
There is one thing I would like to
mention. As fingerprinting advanced to greater technology, criminals also
became innovative in erasing their fingerprints from their fingertips with
acid. Painful but effective.
Faye
M. Tollison
Author
of: To Tell the Truth
Upcoming
books: The Bible Murders
Sarah’s Secret
Member
of: Sisters In Crime
Writers on the Move
