-
In order to determine the cause of death at the scene of the crime, German and Slavic societies decided that it should be medical experts that review and determine the cause of death.
-
For the first time, fingerprints are used. They were used by Arabic merchants who would take debtor’s fingerprint and attach it to a bill
-
The first forensic science manual gets published by the Chinese, which led to it being the first use of medical knowledge used to solve criminal cases.
-
Physical matching of evidence was first recorded during the conviction of John Toms, England. The evidence that was used was a piece of a newspaper that was in the pistol that matched to the newspaper that he had in his pocket.
-
Valentin Ross who was a German chemist, developed a way to detect if there is arsenic in the victim’s stomach, which led to the advancement of investigating poison deaths.
-
An English chemist named James Marsh used a chemical process in order to determine that arsenic was the cause of death during the trial.
-
The first city in the US to use photography for criminal identification was San Francisco.
-
Henry Faulds and William James Herchel find out that fingerprints are unique, and they decide to publish a paper on it. A scientist named Francis Galton then used and adapted their information in court to describe the different patterns.
-
The Coroner’s act was established, and it was used to determine unnatural deaths. Also in the same year, Arthur Conan Doyle published Sherlock Holmes.
-
A system that uses various measures of physical features and bones, known as anthropometry is used throughout Europe and the US.
-
An Argentinean police officer known as Juan Vucetich used fingerprints as evidence in the murder investigation for the first time. The fingerprint identification that he created was then called dactyloscopy.
-
Karl Landsteiner discovered ABO and used it on bloodstains by Dieter Max Richter.
-
Scotland Yard used the fingerprint identification system made by Galton-Henry. It then becomes the most widely used fingerprint method.
-
Fingerprint identification system implemented in NY state prison.
-
Rodolphe Archibald Reiss founded the first school of forensic science in Switzerland.
-
The first legal case ever to involve hair took place after the study derived from Victor Balthazard and Marcelle Lambert was published.
-
Victor Balthazard discovers that gun barrels don’t leave the same markings after the bullet is fired. He developed several of these methods, by using photography.
-
John Larson’s prototype polygraph that he invented in 1921 gets developed for use in police stations.
-
Harvard establishes a chair of legal medicine. The FBI establishes a crime laboratory.
-
Voiceprints began to be used in investigations and as court evidence after a sound spectrograph was discovered to be able to record voices.
-
National Crime Information Center is established by the FBI, which is used to file wanted people, weapons, etc.
-
The Aerospace Corporation in the US develops technology that is used to detect gunshot residue, which is then used to determine the suspect and how close they were to the gun
-
FBI installs the first fingerprint reader.
-
The first automatic fingerprint identification system is implemented by Royal Canadian Mountain Police.
-
Sir Alec Jeffereys developed DNA fingerprinting techniques.
-
Colin Pitchfork is convicted of murdering two teenage girls after DNA fingerprinting was used. This cleared the main suspect of the case.
-
DNA profiling leads to the conviction of Tommy Lee Andrews.
-
DNA evidence is deemed reliable by the National Academy of Sciences.
-
Fingerprint inquiry response cutdown from 2 weeks to 2 hours with the integrated automated fingerprint identification established by the FBI.
-
Online footwear coding and detection system developed by Britain’s Forensic Science Survey helps identify footprints more quickly.