essay on history of fingerprints

History of Fingerprints – On a journey from being JUST impressions to Forensic evidence. Ancient artifacts with carvings similar to friction ridge skin have been discovered in many places throughout the world. In ancient Babylon, fingerprints were used on clay tablets for business transactions.

However, fingerprints are still considered one of the most reliable and widely used forms of forensic evidence. Here is a timeline of key events in the history of fingerprints in forensic science: 1892: Francis Galton publishes “Fingerprints,” outlining the uniqueness and permanence of fingerprints.

The history of the fingerprinting method dates back several centuries, and contrary to prevailing stereotypes, fingerprints were not used in forensic science.

The science of fingerprint identification has evolved over time from the early use of finger prints to mark business transactions in ancient Babylonia to their use today as core technology in...

While it is commonly known that fingerprint identification has played an important role in the history of policing and forensic science, there is another aspect of the history of fingerprinting that is less well understood: how fingerprints have been studied in the sciences.

Fingerprints are the very basis for criminal history foundation at every police agency on earth. Established the first forensic professional organization, the International Association for Identification (IAI), in 1915.

Before DNA technology, the sexiest clues at crime scenes were fingerprints—a latent residue of salts, amino acids, and lipids, dusted into revelation. Scientists describe the basic patterns of fingerprints in terms of arches, whorls, and loops. (Seventy percent of a fingerprint is made up of loops.)

History of Fingerprinting - The history of fingerprinting stretches back to Babylon. Learn the history of fingerprinting and find out how it became a basic investigation technique.

This article summarizes the major developments in the history of efforts to use fingerprint patterns to identify individuals, from the earliest fingerprint classification systems of Vucetich and Henry in the 1890s through the advent of automated fingerprint identification.

A criminal case in Bengal in 1898 is considered to be the first case in which fingerprint evidence was used to secure a conviction. The first systematic use of fingerprints in the United States was in 1902 by Dr. Henry P. de Forest of the New York Civil Service Commission.