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Fingerprints are used on clay tablets for business transactions in Ancient Babylon. The fingerprints were an identifiable marker.
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Archimedes uses the scientific method and observations of density and buoyancy to prove the crown was not made of gold.
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Erasistratus, an ancient Greek physician, discovers that his patients’ pulse rates increase when they are telling lies. Allegedly the first lie detection test.
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A murder was committed using a sickle. All those in the village who owned a sickle were made to bring them out and lay them in the sun. Eventually flies gathered on one particular sickle, identifying it as the murder weapon.
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The Chinese book, His Duan Yu, is published and it describes how to distinguish drowning from strangulation. The first recorded application of medicine to help solve crimes is used.
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The first legal autopsy was performed by Bartolomeo de Varignana. This was used when a nobleman was suspected to be murdered.
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The missing teeth of the French Duke of Burgundy were used to identify remains.
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The first microscope is developed. Although this wasn't used for murder investigations, in the beginning, its usage became more popular in the CSI field overtime.
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John Toms of Lancaster is convicted of murder on the basis of a torn wad of paper found in a pistol matching a remaining piece in his pocket. This is one of the first documented uses of physical matching.
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Henry Goddard first uses bullet comparison to catch a murderer. The comparison was based in a visible flaw in the bullet, traced back to mold.
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Taylor and Wilkes write a paper on the determination of time since death from a fall in body temperature, introducing many current concepts.
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The first advocation of the use of photography for the identification of criminals and the documentation of evidence and crime scenes occurred.
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Henry Faulds of Scotland publishes a paper suggesting fingerprints at the scene of a crime could identify the offender. Faulds uses fingerprints to eliminate an innocent suspect and indicate a perpetrator in a Tokyo burglary.
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The NY States Prison system begins the first systematic use of fingerprints in the US for criminal identification.
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Max Frei-Sulzer develops the tape lift method of collecting fingerprints from crime scenes.
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R. F. Borkenstein invents the Breathalyzer for sobriety testing.
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American geneticist discovers a region of DNA that does not hold any genetic information and is extremely variable between individuals. This started our path to DNA recognition.
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DNA is used for the first time to solve a crime. DNA profiling is used to identify Colin Pitchfork as the murderer of two young girls in the English Midlands.
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DNA profiling is introduced for the first time in a US criminal court.
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The Forensic Science Service launches the UK’s first online footwear coding and detection management system, Footwear Intelligence Technology.
