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Marcello Malpighi
University of Bologna - Anatomy professor who noted the spiral, loops, and ridges in fingerprints utilizing state of the art microscope during his studies. -
John Evangelist Purkinje
University of Breslau, Prussia - Anatomy professor who discovered 9 different fingerprint patterns. -
Sir William James Herschel
Chief Magistrate of the Hooghly district in Jungipoor, India - Herschel was the first one to use fingerprints to "sign" contracts with native indians. His main purpose was to have people bound to the contract rather than signing it. -
Professor Paul-Jean Coulier
Professor Paul-Jean Coulier, published his observations that latent fingerprints could be developed on paper by iodine fuming, and he explained how to preserve the developed impressions. Coulier mentioned the potential for identifying suspects' fingerprints by use of a magnifying glass. -
Dr. Henry Faulds
a British surgeon and Superintendent of Tsukiji Hospital in Tokyo, Japan - He determine the importance of fingerprints and thru his studies of fingerprints on old Chines clay, he then discovered that fingerprints can be used as a personal identification. He saw great promise as a means of individual identification, and developed a classification system for recording these inked impression -
Gilbert Thompson
Employed by the Geological survey of USA, Gilbert Thompson uses his own fingerprints on a document to guard against forgery. This is the first known use of fingerprints for identification in America. -
Alphonse Bertillon
Clerk in the Prefecture of Police at Paris, France - Alphonse developed a system classification where he measured different part of the body such the head length, forearm, and middle finger. -
Mark Twain
Novel Writer - Mark Twain wrote the novel “Life on the Mississippi,” which tells the story of a murderer who is identified by the use of fingerprints. Later book he worte he continued to use fingerprint identification in a trial. -
Sir Francis Galton
British anthropologist and a cousin of Charles Darwin - Galton became the first to provide scientific evidence that no two fingerprints are exactly the same, when he trial a woman who killed her two sons then cut her throat as a way to blame someone else. But she had left her bloody prints on the doors which lead to her. -
Juan Vucetich
Argentine police official - Juan began keeping the first fingerprint files based on Galton’s Details, when he was impressed with Galton's fingerprinting system clasification and determining the murder by the accused mother of killing her two sons. -
Haque & Bose
These were fingerprints experts who worked for the Calcutta (now Kolkata) Anthropometric Bureau. The coucil of the Governor General of India approved the bureau that fingerprints should be used for classification of criminal records. Later, it became the world's first Fingerprint bureau. -
Mr. Edward Richard Henry
British Official - Edward Henry instituted a fingerprinting program for all prisoners, where he met with Hatchel's as a way to adopt his fingerprinting system classificatoin. -
The Fingerprint Branch
The Fingerprint Branch at New Scotland Yard (London Metropolitan Police) was created using the Henry System of Fingerprint Classification -
The New York State Prison
The first systematic use of fingerprints in the United States was by the New York Civil Service Commission for testing. Dr. Henry P. DeForrest pioneers U.S. fingerprinting. The New York State Prison system began the first systematic use of fingerprints in the U.S. for criminals. -
U.S. Army begins using fingerprints.
U.S. Department of Justice forms the Bureau of Criminal Identification in Washington, DC to provide a centralized reference collection of fingerprint cards -
