CHAPTER 2

FINGERPRINT HISTORY
Here is a brief history of the science of fingerprints:

The Bible is the first book that mentioned fingerprints. The

Apostle Paul concludes one of his epistles with the words,
"The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the
token in every epistle: so I write." Some have inferred from
these words that Paul used his finger impressions as a
distinctive signature.
1000 BC; Archaeological evidence of
ancient Chinese and Babylonian
civilizations using fingerprints to legal
documents.

BABYLONIANS - used on clay tablets

for tablets transactions
CHINESE - First user of Fingerprint
"rituals"
HUA CHI - later used in signing on
contract on the part of illiterate.
• 14th Century

• Persia - various
government papers were
reportedly impressed with
fingerprints, and a
government official who
was also a physician made
the observation that no
fingerprints of two persons
Dr. Nehemiah Grew (1684)

•The first to describe friction

ridge skin in detail.
•Grew describes sweat
pores, epidermal ridges, and
their various arrangements.
Bidloo (1685)
•He published a treaty describing sweat pores and
ridges.
•In 1685 he published an anatomical atlas,
Anatomia Hvmani Corposis in which he described
papillary ridges on skin.
Marcelo Malpighi (1686)
• A professor of Anatomy at Balogna
University in Italy
• Dermis and Epidermis - Malpighi Layer
( Stratum Malpighi) - approximately 1.8
thick
• Grandfather of Dactyloscopy

Johann Christoph Andreas Mayer (1788 )

•Gave a detailed description of anatomical
formation of FP
•Skind ridges is never duplicated in two
persons, nevertheless, the similarities are
closer among the some individuals
•Principle of individuality
Jan Evangelista Purkinje (1823)
•Father of Dactyloscopy
•Professor of Anatomy at the University of Breslau
•Thesis - 9 FP pattern

Fig. 7. Photograph of Purkinje

 Purkinje Patterns
1. Transverse curves (Plain arch)
2. Central longitudinal stria ( Tented
arch)
3. Oblique strip (ulnar or radical loop
4. Oblique loop (ulnar or radical loop
5. Almond (whorl)
6. Spiral (whorl)
7. Ellipse - elliptical whorl (whorl)
8. Circle - circular whorl (whorl)
9. Double whorl (twin loop)
• Herman Welcker (1856)

• Printed his own palms and

printed the same after 41
years

• Principle of immutability
 William Herschel (1858)
• Administrative Officer of
Bengal
• Palm prints - later on right
index and middle finger using
fingerprints as means of
identity criminals in jail (1857)
as a means of signature and
failed to mention the potential
for forensic use
 Professor Paul-Jean Coulier (1863)
• He published his observations
that (latent) fingerprints can be
developed in paper by iodine
fuming
• He further explained, how to
preserve (fix) such developed
impressions
• He also mentioned the potential
for identifying suspect fingerprint
by use of a magnifying glass
 Thomas Taylor (1877)

• American microscopist
proposed that finger and
palms prints left on any
object might be used to
solve crimes
 Dr. Henry Faulds (1880)

• A Scottish doctor in Tokyo, Japan

publishes article in "Nature" Faulds
wrote in Nature magazine that when
bloody finger marks or impressions
on clay, glass, etc. exist, they may
lead to the scientific identification of
criminals.
• Examined & compared the thief's FP
left on the crime scene with the
arrested suspect
• Prints left at the crime scene could
lead to identification
 Alphonse Bertillion (1882)
• Father of Personal Identification

• Clerk in Prefecture of police at

Paris, France

• Anthropometry "Bertillion System"

• Measurements of parts of the body

 Will West & William West (1903)
• Will West - incoming prisoner

• William West - existing

prisoner

• Bertillion Method - discredited

 Gilbert Thompsom (1882)
• US Geological Survey in Mexico

• Used his own thumb print on a

document to prevent forgery

• First used of FP in US

• "Lying Bob"
 Mark Twain ( 1883)
• First American writer to use FP
in solving crime in his book

• "Life of Mississippi" - murderer

identified using FP identification

• "Pudd'n Head Wilson" -

dramatic court trial FP
identification
 Juan Vucetich (1891)
• An Argentine Police Official
began the 1st FP files based on
Galton pattern types ( including
Bertillion System)

• Icnofalangometria or
Galtonean method and was later
changed to Dactiloscopy
 Inspector Eduardo Alvarez (1892)
• Made the 1st criminal
Identification
• Francisca Rojas - Believe to be
the first criminal guilty through
FP as an evidence
• who had murdered her two
sons and cut her own throat in
an attempt to blame a
neighboring ranch worker
 Francis Galton (1892)
• British Anthropologist
• First scientist of friction skin
identification
• Established the first civil
Bureau of Personal Identification
in London, England
• Arches, Loops, Whorls
• "No two prints are identical"
• "Individual FP's remain
unchanged for your entire life"
• 1897 - Harris Hawthorne
Wilder, Professor of
Zoology at Smith College,
was studying primates
when he was struck by the
resemblance of their volar
friction ridges to those of
humans
 The first Bureau of Criminal Identification in
the US (1896)

• The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP)

voted in 1896 to create a Bureau of Criminal Identification
(BCI) for collecting mugshots, fingerprints, and
descriptors of criminals. The IACP's BCI became
operational in Chicago, Illinois between 1896 and 1897. In
1902, the BCI moved from Chicago to Washington, DC.
(Jenkins, J. J. (1902).
 1897 - India's Fingerprint Pioneers
• On 12 June 1897, the Council of
the Governor-General of India
approved a committee report that
fingerprints should be used for the
classification of criminal records.

• the Kolkata (now Calcutta)

Fig. 18. Photograph of Qazi Azizul Fig. 19. Photograph of Hem Chandra
Anthropometric Bureau became the Haque Twain Bose

world's first Fingerprint Bureau.

 1900 - the Belper Committee in England
• the Belper Committee in • the Henry Classification
England, chaired by Lord System and the
Belper, recommended that individualization of criminals
all criminal identification through fingerprints became
records be classified by standard practice in England
the fingerprint system. and would eventually be
adopted in most English-
speaking counties
 1901 Sir Edward Henry

• Sir Edward Henry, an

Inspector General of Police in
Bengal, India, develops the
first system of classifying
fingerprints.
• He published the book
“Classification and Uses of
Fingerprints”. “Father of
Fingerprint Science”.
 1902 - Dr. Henry De Forrest
• DeForrest was asked to devise a system to scrutinize
potential civil service employees to lessen the practice of having a
person substitute for the actual candidate in the qualifying civil
service exam.
• Drawing on the knowledge of the unique identification power of
the fingerprint, DeForrest recommended the use of fingerprint
identification.
 1903 - Capt.
James I. Parke
the systematic use of
fingerprinting in
criminal identification
began in the United
States when the New
York State Prison
adopted the fingerprint
system.
 1903 – The William West – Will West Case

• the use of fingerprints in identifying and classifying

individuals began to rise. After 1903, many prison
systems began to use fingerprints as the primary means
of identification.
 1910 - Frederick
Brayley

Published the first

American textbook on
fingerprints, "Arrangement
of Finger Prints,
Identification, and Their
Uses."
• 1905 – U.S. Military adopts the use of fingerprints – soon
thereafter, police agencies began to adopt the use of
fingerprints.

• 1908 – The first official fingerprint card was developed.

 1914 - Edmond Locard
• published his fingerprint
identification conclusions
and the criteria that should
be used to ensure
reliability based on a
statistical analysis study in
1914.
 1915
Inspector Harry H. Caldwell of the Oakland,
• California Police Department's Bureau of Identification wrote
numerous letters to "Criminal Identification Operators" in August
1915, requesting them to meet in Oakland to form an organization
to further the aims of the identification profession. In October
1915, a group of twenty-two identification personnel met and
initiated the "International Association for Criminal Identification"
In 1918, the organization was renamed the International
Association for Identification (IAI) due to the volume of non-
criminal identification work performed by members. Sir Francis
Galton's right index finger appears in the IAI logo. The IAI's official
publication is the Journal of Forensic Identification.
 1916 - Frederick Kuhne
• 1916 - published the “ Fingerprint Instructor” probably the
first authoritative book on fingerprints in the USA.

• 1917 - First Palm print identification is made in Nevada.

The bloody palm print, found on a letter left at the scene
of a stagecoach robbery and murder of its driver, was
identified to Ben Kuhl. (State v. Kuhl 42 Nev. 195 175 PAC
190 (1918).
• 1924– Formation of ID Division of FBI.

• 1925 - Harry J. Myers II, installed the first official foot and
fingerprint system for infants at Jewish Maternity Hospital,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA first such system in the
US.
• 1938 - Harry J. Myers II “History of Identification in the
US” first detailed documented history of fingerprints in the
US.
 1940 - the end of World War II
• most American fingerprints experts agreed there was no
scientific basis for a minimum number of corresponding
minutiae to determine an "identification" and the twelve-
point rule was dropped from the FBI publication, "The
Science of Fingerprints."
• 1973 - The International Association for Identification
Standardization Committee authored a resolution stating that
each identification is unique and no valid basis exists to require a
minimum number of matching points in two friction ridge
impressions to establish a positive identification. The resolution
was approved by members at the 1973 annual IAI conference.

• 1980 – First computer database of fingerprints was developed,

which came to be known as the Automated Fingerprint
Identification System, (AFIS). In the present day, there are nearly
70 million cards, or nearly 700 million individual fingerprints
entered in AFIS.
• 1995 - At the International Symposium on Latent Fingerprint
Detection and Identification, conducted by the Israeli National
Police Agency, at Neurim, Israel, in June 1995, the Neurim
Declaration was issued. The declaration, (authored by Pierre
Margot and Ed German), states "No scientific basis exists for
requiring that a pre-determined minimum number of friction ridge
features must be present in two impressions to establish a
positive identification." The declaration was unanimously
approved by all present, and later, signed by 28 persons from the
following 11 countries: Australia, Canada, France, Holland,
Hungary, Israel, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, United
Kingdom, and the United States.
 2021 - World's Largest Database
• The Unique Identification Authority of India is the world's largest fingerprint (and
largest multi-modal biometric) system using fingerprint, face, and iris biometric
records. India's Unique Identification project is also known as Aadhaar, a word
meaning "the foundation" in several Indian languages. Aadhaar is a voluntary
program, intending to provide reliable national identification documents to most
of India's estimated 1.25 billion residents.

• With a biometric database many times larger than any other in the world,
Aadhaar's ability to leverage automated fingerprint and iris modalities (and
potentially automated face recognition) enables rapid and reliable automated
searching and identification impossible to accomplish with fingerprint technology
alone, especially when searching children and elderly residents' fingerprints
(children are fingerprinted and photographed as young as age 5). As of January
2020, the Authority has issued more than 1.25 billion.
 Development of Fingerprint in the
Philippines

The use of fingerprint started in the 1900. it was through the

Americans that the science of the fingerprints was introduced
in the Philippines.
Garry Jones taught the the science of the Fingerprint in the in the
Philippines.
• Geneso Reyes was the first filipino fingerprint technician
employed by the Philippines Constabulary
• Isabela Bernales was the first Filipina Fingerprint
Tecnician
• Republic Act No. 409 establish the Criminal Records and
Identification Division (CRID)

• Commonwealth Act. 181, dated November 13, 1936

provided for the establishment of the Division of
Investigation (D.I) which authorized the use of the
fingerprint Identifiation System.
• Republic Act No. 157 abolished the Division of
Investigation (DI) on June 19, 1947 and at the same time
created the Bureau of Investigation (BI). Subsequently,
the BI was rename National bureau of Investigation (NBI).
• According to local crime laboratory monographs and
manuscripts, the name Agustin C. Patricio was
specifically mentioned topping the first examination
on fingerprint given by Flaviano C. Guerrero. On
March 31, 1948, he passed the bar examination and
was included in the roll of attorneys.
• 1947 - Pursuant to EO No. 94, series 1947, the
Philippine Constabulary was placed under the
administrative and operational control of GHQ, AFP
with a very extensive range of diversified missions
that do not fall under its primary responsibilities. By
express provision of law, the PC enforced the motor
vehicles law, fishing and games law, the alien law for
registration and fingerprinting.
• 1954 - Former Supreme Court Justice Felix Angelo
Bautista founded the Philippine College of
Criminology, the pioneer school of Criminology for
scientific crime detection. This higher educational
institution is formerly known as Plaridel Educational
Institute. The subject Personal Identification was
included in the Criminology curriculum.
• 1967 - May 14, Lucila Lalu, the first Filipina chop-chop lady
was identified through systematic classification of her
fingerprint. Her identification served as an investigative lead
towards the identification of the possible culprits.
• 1968 - According to the Bureau of Prisons, fingerprints were
first systematically used as part of the carpeta or also
known as prisoner’s record.
• Commonwealth Act No. 181, Dated November 13, 1936
provided for the establishment of the Division of
Investigation (D.I) which authorized the use of
FingerprintIdentification.
 Group Member
Marcenel S. Sanguines
Arnold III A. Rongo
Macky M. Arquio
Eleazar Bancairen Jr.