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In 1887, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote and published Sherlock Holmes.
This contributed to forensic science because of how much attention it drew to the practice. -
Juan Vucetich is the first to use fingerprints as evidence in a murder investigation. He invented a method of fingerprint identification known as dactyloscopy.
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Victor Balthazard published a study on hair. Legal cases involving hair soon follow this study.
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Victor Balthazard figured out that gun barrels leave unique individual markings on each bullet fired. He developed methods to match bullets to guns.
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Russian paleontologist Michael Gerasimov develops a method to reconstruct facial appearance from skull fragments
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Dr. Edmond Locard came up with his Exchange Principle that when two objects come into contact with each other something is exchanged and taken away by both objects.
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John Larson invented the polygraph. Police stations began to use it for forensic investigations in 1930
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The first lie detector is built by John Larson, a University of California medical student.
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Dr William Bass came up with the idea of a body farm, this allowed research on human decomposition etc. This body farm was started at the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center
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Auto fingerprint system is now implemented by Canadian police. Fingerprints found at a crime scene can be compared to stored data of fingerprints on a computer.
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Tommy Lee Andrews was convicted of sexual assaults by the use of DNA profiling. Andrews was released in 2021. he was the first person in U.S. history to be convicted of a crime through the use of DNA evidence.
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Britain’s Forensic Science Service began providing online footwear coding and detection which allows detectives to match footprints much more easily. This can help eliminate suspects if they do not own the shoe prints found at the crime scene.
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Forensic pathologists ruled George Floyd died from cardiopulmonary arrest.