Phil Atkinson, age 12, of Missoula, _ Mt., for his question:
WHEN WAS FINGERPRINTING FIRST USED?
Fingerprinting is a method of identification using the impressions made by the tiny ridge formations or patterns found on the underside of the tips of each finger in humans. The first recorded use of fingerprints was by the ancient Assyrians and Chinese for the signing of legal documents.
Probably the first modern study of fingerprints was made by a Czech physiologist named Johannes Evangelists Purkinje, who in 1823 proposed a system of classification that attracted little attention.
The use of fingerprints for identification purposes was proposed late in the 19th century by Sir Francis Galton, a British scientist who wrote a detailed study of fingerprints in which he presented a new classification system using prints of all 10 fingers. This is the basis of identification systems still in use.
In the 1890s the police in Bengal, India, under the British official Sir Edward Henry, began using fingerprints to identify criminals. As assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Henry established the first British fingerprint files in London in 1901.
After 1900 the use of fingerprinting as a means of identifying criminals spread quickly throughout Europe and the United States, superseding the old Bertillon system of identification by means of body measurements.
No two persons have exactly the same arrangement of ridge patterns and the patterns of any one individual remain unchanged throughout life.
As crime detection methods improved through the years, law enforcement officers found that any smooth, hard surface touched by a human hand would yield fingerprints made by the oily secretion present on the skin. When these so called latent prints were dusted with powder or chemically treated, the identifying fingerprint pattern could be seen and preserved.
By comparing fingerprints at the scene of a crime with the fingerprint record of suspected persons, officials can now establish absolute proof of the presence or identity of a person.
The confusion and inefficiency caused by the establishment of many separate fingerprint archives in the United States led the federal government to set up a central agency in 1924, the Identification Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The bureau maintains a criminal and civil file.
In World War II most war plant workers and U.S. government employees were required to have their fingerprints filed with the FBI. In all, the FBI has fingerprints of almost 200 million people.
To obtain a set of fingerprints, the and of the finger are inked and then pressed or rolled one by one on some receiving surface. Fingerprints are then classified and filed on the basis of the ridge patterns.