History of Forensic Science

By Sierra_j
  • 44 BCE

    death of an emperor

    Julius Caesar is assassinated. Following this event, a physician performed an autopsy, and determined that of the 23 wounds found on the body, only one was fatal.
  • 400

    Who determines cause of death

    Germanic and Slavic societies made law that medical experts must be the ones to determine cause of death in crimes.
  • 600

    Use of fingerprints for the first time

    Fingerprints first used to determine identity. Arabic merchants would take a debtor's fingerprint and attach it to the bill.
  • 1248

    First forensic science book

    First forensic science manual published by the Chinese. This was the first known record of medical knowledge being used to solve criminal cases.

  • Reporting cases

    First pathology reports published.

  • Physical evidence used in criminal case

    First recorded instance of physical matching of evidence leading to a murder conviction (John Toms, England). Evidence was a torn edge of newspaper in a pistol that matched newspaper in his pocket.

  • Investigating poisoning

    German chemist Valentin Ross developed a method of detecting arsenic in a victim's stomach, thus advancing the investigation of poison deaths.

  • More physical evidence discovered to work in forensics

    Clothing and shoes of a farm laborer were examined and found to match evidence of a nearby murder scene, where a young woman was found drowned in a shallow pool.

  • First uses of photos in identification

    San Francisco uses photography for criminal identification, the first city in the US to do so.

  • Learning about forensics

    First school of forensic science founded by Rodolphe Archibald Reiss, in Switzerland.

  • First national crime system

    FBI established the National Crime Information Center, a computerized national filing system on wanted people, stolen vehicles, weapons, etc.

  • Faster fingerprint IDs

    FBI establishes the integrated automated fingerprint identification system, cutting down fingerprint inquiry response from two weeks to two hours.

  • Footwear detection system

    Britain's Forensic Science Service develops online footwear coding and detection system. This helps police to identify footwear marks quickly.

  • Facial sketches matched to photos

    Michigan state university develops software that automatically matches hand-drawn facial sketches to mug shots stored in databases.

  • 4 second dental match

    Japanese researchers develop a dental x-ray matching system. This system can automatically match dental x-rays in a database, and makes a positive match in less than 4 seconds.