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chinese used fingerprints to establish identity of documents and clay sculpture, but without any formal classification system.
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The first recorded application of medical knowledge to the solution of crime was the chinese book, Hsi Duan Yu.
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One of the first documented uses of physical matching, was when John Toms was convicted of murder on the basis of the torn edge wad of newspaper in a pistol matching a remaining peice in his pocket.
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William Nichol invented the polarizing light microscope
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James Marsh, a Scottish chemist, was the first to use Toxicology in a jury trial.
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Sir Edward Richard Henry developed the print classification system that would come to be used in Europe and
North America. He published Classification and Uses of finger prints. -
Henry P. DeForrest pioneered the first systematic use of fingerprints in the United States by the New York Civil
Service Commission. -
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt establishes Federal Bureau of Investigation.
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John Larson and Leonard Keeler designed the portable polygraph.
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August Vollmer, chief of police in Los Angeles, California, implemented the first U.S. police crime laboratory.
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Meuller was the first medico-legal investigator to suggest the identification of salivary amlyase as a presumptive test
for salivary stains. -
In the first use of DNA to solve a crime, Sir Alec Jeffreys used DNA profiling to identify Colin Pitchfork as the murderer of
two young girls in the English Midlands. -
DNA profiling was introduced for the first time in a U.S. criminal court. Based on RFLP analysis performed by
Lifecodes. -
The FBI introduced computerized searches of the AFIS fingerprint database. Live scan and card scan devices allowed
interdepartmental submissions. -
The FBI upgraded its computerized fingerprint database and implemented the Integrated Automated Fingerprint
Identification System (IAFIS), allowing paperless submission, storage, and search capabilities directly to the national
database maintained at the FBI.