Fingerprints

Abstract

Humans’ fascination with fingerprints began thousands of years ago, as evidenced by the pictures left behind. Prehistoric cave art, including a hand with ridge patterns, was discovered in Nova Scotia. Other caves in France depict images of finger and footprints dating back further than 15,000 BCE. During the reign of Hammurabi in Babylon (1955–1913 BCE), fingerprints were used as seals on contracts, indicating an awareness of the unique and personal nature of the raised patterns on the fingers. This practice is also attributed to the Chinese as early as the second or third century BCE. Throughout the world over the next 2000 years, fascination with fingerprints evolved into study and applied knowledge that has laid the ground work for one of the most powerful forensic tools available to the modern criminal investigator. Listed here is a more detailed timeline of this fingerprint history:

• • Circa 1200, China: Fingerprints featured as a criminal identification tool in a novel.

• • 1600s, England: Function of the pores in the hands and feet are described.

• • 1600s, Italy: Friction ridges studied under the microscope, a new invention.

• • 1700s, Germany: Awareness of the uniqueness of fingerprints.

• • 1800s, Germany: Fingerprint patterns classified.

• • 1800s, India: Fingerprints recorded to defeat fraud in pension payments.

• • 1800s, Great Britain: Further studies upholding the individual nature of friction ridge detail.

• • 1800s, Great Britain: Endorsement of the unchanging and, hence, reliable nature of fingerprints for identification.

• • 1890s, Argentina: Development of an operational fingerprint identification system for police investigations.

• • 1892, Argentina: First criminal case in history to be solved by fingerprints.

• • 1896, Great Britain: Development of Henry System, the method used to classify sets of fingerprints until replacement by computer databases.