History of Crime Investigation

  • Arsenic Poisining

    Karl Scheele realized he could transform arsenious oxide into arsenious acid, which, when combined with zinc, produced arsine. This discovery led to the eventual ability to detect arsenic poisoning.
  • Traite de poisons

    Professor Mathieu Orfila, an expert of medicinal chemistry at the University of Paris, became known as the Father of Toxicology in 1813 after he published Traite de Poisons. He is the first to be credited with attempting to use a microscope to assess blood and semen stains.
  • Bow Street Runner

    A former Bow Street Runner employed by Scotland Yard was the first documented case of law enforcement comparing bullets to catch their man. Henry Goddard noticed a flaw in a bullet that was traced back to the original bullet mold.
  • Christian Schonbein

    A German scientist named Christian Schonbein, who observed that hemoglobin had the capacity to oxidize hydrogen peroxide, which caused it to foam, inadvertently discovered the first presumptive test for the presence of blood in 1863.
  • Jack The Ripper

    During the reign of England's most notorious serial killer, Jack the Ripper, the use of crime scene photographs were extensively studied in an effort to detect clues and criminal profiling of the vicious murderer. Scotland Yard is the first to have attempted criminal profiling as a result of the Ripper's savage modus operandi.
  • Finger Print Scanner

    In 1891, Juan Vucetich, an Argentine Police Official, began the first fingerprint files based on Galton pattern types. At first, Vucetich included the Bertillon System with the files. In 1892, Juan Vucetich made the first criminal fingerprint identification.
  • Modern Forensic Techniques

    The field of forensic investigation achieved major developments, due to the design and use of modern forensic methods and discoveries such as Benzidine, a chemical compound used to develop a universal, presumptive test for blood.