Face recognition, iris scanning and DNA analysis are now technologies to infer the identity of people. But fingerprint files, probably the first biometric databases, are more than a hundred years old.
At the time, the idea of using fingerprints for identification led to a bitter argument between two men who both claimed to have invented the process. In the 1870s, Henry Faulds, a Scottish missionary in Japan, came across an ancient pot bearing the fingerprints of its maker. The discovery inspired him to research fingerprints. In 1880, Faulds published a letter in the journal Nature, in which he noted: “If bloody fingerprints or indentations exist on clay, glass, etc., they could lead to the scientific identification of criminals.”
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On the last Thursday of the month we turn back time and look at exciting events, fateful coincidences and smart people with groundbreaking ideas.
The following month, Nature published a response from William Herschel, a British official in India. Herschel had been collecting fingerprints since the 1860s and suspected that each person’s fingerprint is unique – but he had never investigated the prints’ potential for forensic purposes.
Scotland Yard introduced fingerprint database
Neither article received much attention until 1892, when Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin, published Finger Prints. Galton found that fingerprints are indeed unique and do not change during a person’s lifetime. He therefore recommended a classification system. In 1901 Scotland Yard established its Fingerprint Bureau based on Galton’s system.
Although Faulds had proposed a similar system to Scotland Yard years earlier, Galton and Herschel claimed the innovation as their own. Enraged, Faulds instigated a public letter battle with Herschel that lasted until his rival’s death in 1917. Regardless of who first saw fingerprints as a forensic tool, the method caught on. In 1902, fingerprints were first used in evidence by a British court to identify a burglar who had stolen some billiard balls.
Even if fingerprint capture is reminiscent of the Sherlock Holmes era in which it was invented, new tools have meanwhile brought the process into the digital age. Today, the FBI’s fingerprint system contains the fingerprints of more than 100 million people. A suspect’s prints can be identified within two hours.
(jle)