A lot of my books involve fingerprinting, and I had the exciting opportunity to experience it
myself a few years ago. Because my experience involved a travel permit, the process was done
through a branch of Homeland Security, and they have the latest technology. No ink, no paper
cards to be filed. It’s all electronic nowadays. But how did the collection and comparison of
fingerprints start? Research revealed a lot about it. What follows is not a complete history, but I
picked out some interesting and significant milestones in the history of fingerprinting.
Way back, earlier than 1000 B.C., fingerprints were used on clay tablets to seal business
transactions in ancient Babylon.
History in the Making
The Chinese began using thumbprints on clay seals to “sign” documents in the third century B.C.
During the T’ang Dynasty, 610 to 907 A.D., fingerprints were used on official documents.
In the 14th Century A.D., in Persia, many government documents had fingerprint impressions,
and a government physician noted that no two fingerprints were exactly the same.
In 1686, an Italian professor of anatomy, Marcello Malpighi, used new technology—a
microscope—to study fingerprints. He noted the common details of spirals, loops, and ridges.
In 1823, a Prussian professor of anatomy, Johannes Purkinje, described nine fingerprint patterns.
Still no mention was made of using fingerprints as a method of identification.
In 1858, Sir William Herschel, who was the chief magistrate of the British District of Jungipoor,
India, began requiring a fingerprint and signature on civil contracts completed there with citizens
of India. He used this to make the people involved feel more bound to the contract, but over time
he made the observation that no two were alike, and he said that fingerprints could be used for
personal identification purposes. Herschel collected his own fingerprints over more than fifty
years and noted that they did not change.
In 1877, The American Journal of Microscopy and Popular Science reported that microscopist
Thomas Taylor, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, proposed that finger and palm prints
left on any object might be used to solve crimes.
Dr. Henry Faulds, a British surgeon supervising a hospital in Tokyo, published an article in a
scientific journal in 1880. He discussed using printer’s ink as a method of collecting fingerprints
for the purpose of personal identification. He developed a system of classifying them and sent his
observations to Charles Darwin. Darwin, who was aging and ill, forwarded Dr. Faulds’s data to
his cousin, Sir Francis Galton.
In 1882, fingerprints were first known to be used for identification in America by Gilbert
Thompson. An employee of the U.S. Geological Survey in New Mexico, he used his own
fingerprints on a document to guard against forgery.
Author Mark Twain was interested in fingerprinting, and he used it in two of his novel plots. In
Life on the Mississippi (1883), a murderer was identified by the use of fingerprints. In his 1884
book, Pudd’nhead Wilson, Twain made it a major part of the plot, and fingerprint evidence was
included in a courtroom scene.
Darwin’s cousin, Galton, published the first book on fingerprints in 1892. He was a British
anthropologist, and he discussed in his book the uniqueness of fingerprints and the individual
details they contain.
The first known collection of criminals’ fingerprints began in 1891 in Argentina, initiated by
Juan Vucetich, a police official. The first known case in which a fingerprint was used in solving
a crime took place in 1892.
In 1896, the International Association of Chiefs of Police established the National Bureau of
Criminal Identification. Its purpose was exchanging arrest information between agencies.
In 1901, back to India: Sir Edward Henry, an inspector general of police in Bengal, developed
the first system of classifying fingerprints. It was adopted as the official system in England and
eventually spread over the world. He was later the Home Office Secretary and published The
Classification and Use of Fingerprints. The Fingerprint Branch of New Scotland Yard was
established, using Henry’s system.
In 1902, a Paris murder case was solved when police took a fingerprint from the crime scene and
matched it to one already on file, belonging to a criminal previously arrested. In America at this
time, the systematic use of fingerprints was beginning.
In 1905, the U.S. Army began taking
members’ fingerprints, and the Navy and Marine Corps began doing so within three years.
In 1910, Frederick Brayley published the first American textbook on fingerprints, Arrangement
of Finger Prints, Identification, and Their Uses.
Fingerprints were first accepted by United States courts as a reliable means of identification in
1911. Thomas Jennings was the first person to be convicted of murder in the U.S. based on
fingerprint evidence.
Also in 1911, the first central storage place for fingerprints in North America was established in
Ottawa, Canada, maintained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
In 1924, Congress established the Identification Division of the F.B.I. By 1946, the F.B.I.’s
fingerprint repository had more than 100 million fingerprint cards.
The first computer database of fingerprints was developed in 1980. It came to be known as the
Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS—later the Integrated Automated
Identification System or IAFIS). It is maintained by the FBI, and has now been retired in favor of
a more complex biometric system called Next Generation Identification. Today there are more than 100 million fingerprint records entered in the system. Computers can search millions of records in this system in minutes.
In 1996, fingerprinting of children became common in America as a guard against abduction.
Parents were given the record card or a home fingerprint kit, maintaining their privacy unless the
record was needed. More than 5 million Child ID Fingerprinting Kits had been distributed
around the world by 2001. I was not able to get more recent figures.
In 1999, the F.B.I. phased out the use of cards and now uses the computerized Next Generation
Identification system, based in Clarksburg, W.V. It contains computerized records for
approximately 161 million criminals and civilians. Older paper cards are still maintained at
another facility. About 18,000 law enforcement agencies use the database.
These are just a few of the significant events in the history of fingerprinting. The detectives in
my Maine Justice series use fingerprints as one of many tools in solving their cases. Some of the
books in the series were written more than twenty years ago, so they may be slightly outdated
when referring to AFIS and fingerprinting.
Giveaway
If you would like to be entered in a drawing for your choice of books in this series, leave a
comment below, including your contact information. The Maine Justice series currently contains
eight titles, starting with The Priority Unit. The most recent addition is book 8, Time to Pay.
Susan Page Davis is the author of more than one hundred novels and novellas in the mystery, romantic suspense, and historical romance genres. A Maine native, she now lives in western Kentucky. She is a winner of the Carol Award, two Inspirational Readers’ Choice Awards, three Will Rogers Medallions, and more. Visit her website at https://susanpagedavis.com, where you can see all her books, sign up for her occasional newsletter, enter a month book drawing, browse her online bookstore, and find book club kits and discussion questions for select books.
