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300 BCE
China- Documents
Thumbprints in clay are used as a means to sign documents in China. -
200 BCE
China- Burglaries
Hand prints are used as evidence in burglaries during the Qin Dynasty. -
Marcello Malpighi
In 1686 Malpighi was an anatomy professor at the University of Bologna. He first noted different patterns in fingerprints including ridges, spirals, and loops. A layer of skin has since been named after him called the Malpighi layer. -
John Evangelist Purkinje
Purkinje was a professor at the University of Breslau. Purkinje published a thesis that discussed nine different finger print patterns. -
Sir William Herschel
Sir William Herschel was a British Administrator in India. He required fingerprints and signatures on civil contracts. He had limited experience with fingerprints, but as his collection of prints grew, so did his convictions that fingerprints could prove identity through a person's life. -
Paul-Jean Coulier
Coulier was a professor at Val-de-Grace in Paris who published his findings that fingerprints can be preserved on paper by iodine fuming. -
Dr. Henry Faulds
Dr. Faulds, a doctor in Tokyo, used fingerprints to match an abandoned bottle to a lab worker. After studying more fingerprints from his students, Faulds theorized that fingerprints could be used to find the individuals of which the prints belong to. -
Mark Twain
In the early stages of fingerprinting science, Mark Twain wrote that a murder was solved in two of his books. In "Life of a Mississippi", Twain wrote that the murderer was identified with a fingerprint. Later Twain wrote in "Pudd'n Head Wilson" about a trial that was concluded with a fingerprint. -
Sir Francis Galton
Galton was a British anthropologist. He suggested using fingerprints as a means of identification. -
Juan Vucetich
Juan Vucetich was a a police official in Argentina. Vucetich began the first fingerprint files by using Galton's fingerprint pattern types. In 1892, Vucetich used his files to prove that a bloody hand print belonged to a woman named Francisca Rojas. With the prints Vucetich was able to prove that Rojas had murdered her sons and had attempted to cover it up by cutting her own throat. -
Metropolitan Police
New Scotland Yard in London created a Fingerprint branch by using the Henry System of Fingerprint Classification. -
New York Civil Service Commission
The New York Civil Service Commission begins the first systematic use of fingerprint in the United States. Fingerprints are used as identification for testing. -
New York Prison System
The New York Prison System first began using a system of fingerprints for criminals in the United States. -
US Army/US Navy/US Marine Corps
The United States' army began using fingerprints in 1905. The US Navy began using fingerprints in 1907. And the United States' Marine Corps began using fingerprints in 1908. -
First Textbook on Fingerprints
Frederick Brayley published the first US textbook on fingerprints in 1910.The textbook was called "Brayley's Arrangement of Finger Prints, Identification, and Their Uses". -
Edmond Locard
Locard found that if twelve points on a finger could be found on two different prints, the consistent points could prove positive identification. -
FBI
Congress established an Identification Division in the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1924. The National Bureau and Leavenworth merged to form a central head of the FBI fingerprint collection. -
AFIS
The FBI begins updating their fingerprinting system. The FBI begins phasing out fingerprint cards, replacing them with the new AFIS system. The new IAFIS starts out with around 33 million criminal fingerprints in the system. -
Interpol
Interpol, the world's largest police organization, reaches over 150,000 sets of cataloged fingerprints from one hundred and ninety member countries. -
Unique Identification Authority
The Unique Identification Authority becomes the world's largest fingerprint system. The system is used in India, and it is also known as Aadhaar.
