History of Fingerprinting

One of the most fascinating aspects of forensic science, fingerprint identification plays a crucial role in providing a breakthrough in some of the most intriguing cases of crime. Each human being has a unique fingerprint pattern, which serves as an identification mark for that particular person. This helps the law enforcement agencies to find the criminals based on the fingerprints they find on the crime scene. The process has come a long way, and its fascinating history is the evidence of that.

History of Fingerprint Technology

The practice of identifying humans on the basis of their fingerprints has come a long way. Earlier, the police officials would collect fingerprints and analyze them manually - a practice which took several days. Today, fingerprints are just scanned and fed into computers, which in turn analyzes them in a jiffy. Given below is some information which will shed light on the how the technique developed over the period.

First Use of Fingerprints
The use of fingerprints for identification can be traced back to around 1885-1913 B.C.E., wherein fingerprints were taken on wet clay tablets as a proof for the validity of business transactions in Babylonia. The same process for authentication of business transactions was used in China in 246 B.C.E., however the impressions were taken on a paper, after dipping the fingers in ink, instead of clay. With time other cultures also accepted the trend of using fingerprints as signatures to validate documents in order to reduce fraud.

Fingerprinting in Forensic Science
Though the practice can be traced back to several centuries, the use of fingerprints in forensic science only began in the 19th century. In 1858, Sir William Herschel, an English administrator in India, introduced the practice of taking palm prints of the local residents with the intention of reducing the number of frauds in business deals. As the practice continued, the palm prints were replaced by thumb prints, and the same was introduced in other departments, the most important one being the law enforcement agencies.

Introduction of Fingerprints Classification System
In 1874, Dr Henry Faulds, a Scottish missionary working in Japan, realized that fingerprint patterns didn't change. He put forward that the sophisticated pattern of fingerprints of individuals was not susceptible to alterations due to superficial injuries. On the behest of Faulds and Charles Darwin, Darwin's cousin Sir Francis Galton took the responsibility of developing a fingerprint classification system. He collected around 8000 fingerprint samples and analyzed them, before finally coming up with a book titled Fingerprints, wherein he introduced the system of fingerprints classification, in 1892.

First Use of Fingerprints to Solve a Case
While Sir Francis Galton was working on fingerprints classification, an Argentine police officer, Juan Vucetich was working on the possibility of using fingerprints to nab criminals. He referred to this process of identifying the fingerprints as 'comparative dactyloscopy'. In 1892, he was working on a case of a murder of two boys. The prime suspect for the murder was the lover of the victims mother. However, Vucetich's investigations revealed that the fingerprints found on the crime scene were those of the mother herself, and not her lover as suspected. This was the first use of fingerprints to solve a mystery pertaining to some crime.

Henry Classification System
The then commissioner of the Metropolitan Police of London, Sir Edward Henry was quite inspired by the fact that fingerprints could be used as evidence to nab criminals. He put this practice to use in his area of jurisdiction, and simultaneously began working on his own classification system based on Sir Galton's classification system. He realized that the basic characteristics of fingerprint ridges like the direction, flow and pattern could make it even easier to distinguish one fingerprint sample from another. This made the Henry classification system, the most preferred method of fingerprint classification in the world. By 1901, Scotland Yard had its own Fingerprints Bureau, which only specialized in fingerprint identification.

The advent of computers in 1970s made fingerprinting even easier, as the electronic process took less time and produced accurate matches. The Japanese National Police Agency introduced the first electronic fingerprint matching system, the Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS), in 1980s. This integrated several law enforcement agencies across the world, thus making it possible to match the fingerprints found on the crime scene with millions of fingerprint samples across the world. In 1999, the Criminal Justice Information Services Division of FBI introduced the Integrated AFIS (IAFIS), a more sophisticated system of fingerprint identification, which has the ability to search and match fingerprints across the world in a mere 30 minutes.