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Chinese used fingerprints to establish identity of documents and clay sculpture, but without any formal classification
system. This classification system would be found later in the 20th Century. -
Quintilian, an attorney in the Roman courts, showed that bloody palm prints were meant to frame a blind man of his
mother’s murder. -
A Chinese book, which was written by Hsi Duan Yu (the washing away of wrongs), shows a description of how to distinguish drowning from being strangulation. This was the first recorded application of medical knowledge to the solution of crime.
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1609 The first treatise on systematic document examination was published by François Demelle of France
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In Lancaster, England, John Toms was convicted of murder on the evidence shown of torn edge of wad of newspaper in a
pistol matching a remaining piece in his pants pocket. This was one of the first uses of physical matching that was ever documented in history. -
In the year 1800, Thomas Bewick, who was an English naturalist, used engravings from the use of his own fingerprints to identify books he published.
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In 1839, H. Bayard published the first reliable procedures for the microscopic detection of sperm otherwise none as semen. During this prcedure, he also noted the different
microscopic characteristics of various different substrate fabrics. -
In 1851, Jean Servais Stas, who was a chemistry professor from Brussels, Belgium, became the first successful experiment to identify
vegetable poisons in body tissue. -
In 1853, Ludwig Teichmann, who lived in Kracow, Poland, developed the first microscopic crystal test for hemoglobin using hemin crystals.
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In 1856, Sir William Herschel, a British officer working for the Indian Civil service, began to use thumbprints on documents
both as a substitute for written signatures for illiterates and to verify document signatures. -
In 1863, the German scientist Schönbein first discovered the ability of hemoglobin to oxidize hydrogen peroxide making it
foam. This resulted in first presumptive test for blood. -
1877 Thomas Taylor, microscopist to U.S. Department of Agriculture suggested that markings of the palms of the hands
and the tips of the fingers could be used for identification in criminal cases. Although, it was then reported in the American
Journal of Microscopy and Popular Science and Scientific American, the idea was apparently never looked into from this
source. -
In 1918, Edmond Locard first suggested and showed 12 matching points as a positive fingerprint identification.
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In 1932, The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) crime laboratory was created and built in Washington D.C.
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In 1950, Max Frei-Sulzer, founder of the first Swiss criminalistics laboratory, developed the tape lift method of collecting
trace evidence. This has helped further the development of crime scene investigation better than ever before, and crime scene investigators still use this technique today.
