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1977 BCE
1977
On 1 August 1977 at New Orleans, Louisiana, members attending the 62nd Annual Conference of the International Association for Identification (IAI) voted to establish the world's first certification program for fingerprint experts. Since then, the IAI's Latent Print Certification Board has tested thousands of applicants, and periodically proficiency tests all IAI Certified Latent Print Examiners (CLPEs). -
1914 BCE
1914
In 1914, Hakon Jrgensen with the Copenhagen, Denmark Police lectures about the distant identification of fingerprints at the International Police Conference in Monaco. The process involved encoding fingerprint features for transmission to distant offices facilitating identification through electronic communications. In 1916, the book "Distant Identification" is published and used in Danish police training. -
1907 BCE
1907
In 1907, the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) Bureau of Criminal Identification moves from Washington, DC to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas where it is staffed at least partially by inmates. Suspicious of inmates involvement with the identification process, the International Association of Chiefs of Police BCI (still located in Washington, DC), refused to share with the DOJ BCI in Kansas. -
1901 BCE
1901
n 1901, Scotland Yard established its first Fingerprint Bureau. The following year, fingerprints were presented as evidence for the first time in English courts. In 1903, the New York state prisons adopted the use of fingerprints, followed later by the FBI. -
1897 BCE
1897 - India's Fingerprint Pioneers
On 12 June 1897, the Council of the Governor General of India approved a committee report that fingerprints should be used for the classification of criminal records. The Anthropometric Bureau in Kolkata (now Calcutta) became the world's first Fingerprint Bureau later that year. Qazi Azizul Haque and Hem Chandra Bose worked in the Calcutta Anthropometric Bureau (before it became the Fingerprint Bureau). -
1892 BCE
1892
Around the same time, Juan Vucetich, a police officer in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was developing his own variation of a fingerprinting system. In 1892, Vucetich was called in to assist with the investigation of two boys murdered in Necochea, a village near Buenos Aires. Suspicion had fallen initially on a man named Velasquez, a love interest of the boys' mother, Francisca Rojas. -
1853 BCE
1800s-1853
In 1823, Jan Evangelista Purkinje, anatomy professor at the University of Breslau, published his thesis discussing nine fingerprint patterns. Purkinje made no mention of the value of fingerprints for personal identification. Purkinje is referred to in most English language publications as John Evangelist Purkinje. -
Period: 1600 BCE to 1684 BCE
1600s -1684
1684 - Grew
In the "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London" paper in 1684, Dr. Nehemiah Grew was the first European to publish friction ridge skin observations. -
1440 BCE
1440s Persia
The 14th century Persian book "Jaamehol-Tawarikh" (Universal History), attributed to Khajeh Rashiduddin Fazlollah Hamadani (1247-1318), includes comments about the practice of identifying persons from their fingerprints. -
1970a -1980s
The Henry system finally enabled law enforcement officials to classify and identify individual fingerprints. Unfortunately, the system was very cumbersome. When fingerprints came in, detectives would have to compare them manually with the fingerprints on file for a specific criminal (that's if the person even had a record).