In 1870 Alphonse Bertillon, a French anthropologist, devised a system of identification in which the dimensions of certain bony parts of the body were measured and recorded. These measurements were then reduced to a formula. Theoretically, this formula would only apply to one person and wouldn’t change during their adult life. This system was named the Bertillon system, after its inventor. This system seemed to be effective, but it was very hard to search through all the measurements by hand in order to find a person with one arm that was a centimeter longer than the other. It was generally accepted for about thirty years until two men with almost the same name had nearly identical measurements. The system never recovered from this incident.
In ancient civilizations, a criminal was marked as a criminal through branding or maiming. The thief would lose the hand that was used to commit the thievery.
Some ancient civilizations used fingerprints as a way of sealing documents or “signing” official papers. In ancient Babylon, the clay tablets that were used for business transactions required fingerprints. In ancient China and 14th century Persia, thumb prints were found on clay seals or on various official documents. In Persia, one government official observed that no two fingerprints were exactly alike.
In 1686, Marcello Malpighi, a professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna, noticed ridges, spirals and loops in fingerprints but didn’t mention their value for individual identification. In 1823, another professor of anatomy wrote a thesis discussing 9 fingerprint patterns, but again didn’t make mention of the importance in these patterns for identification. He is accredited as the first to study fingerprints under a microscope.
The English began using fingerprints in 1858. Sir William Herschel decided to impress his hand print on the back of a contract.......
