The
earliest dated prints of the ridged skin on human hands and feet
were made about 4,000 years ago during the pyramid building era in
Egypt. In addition, one small portion of palm print, not known to be
human, has been found impressed in hardened mud at a 10,000-year old
site in Egypt.
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Chinese
fingerprinting
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It was common practice for the Chinese to use inked fingerprints on
official documents, land sales, contracts, loans and acknowledgments
of debts. The oldest existing documents so endorsed date from the
3rd century BC, and it was still an effective practice until recent
times. Even though it is recorded that the Chinese used their
fingerprints to establish identity in courts in litigation over
disputed business dealings, researchers fail to agree as to whether
the Chinese were fully aware of the uniqueness of a fingerprint or
whether the physical contact with documents had some spiritual
significance.
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Dr
Nehemiah Grew
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The first documented interest in the skin's ridges in the western
world, a paper written in 1684 by an Englishman, Dr. Nehemiah Grew,
was mainly of an anatomical nature. A small number of other
academics from various European countries also made anatomical
studies of the skin. Professor Marcello Malpighi, a plant
morphologist at the University of Bologna, performed research
similar to Grew's and published similar findings in his 1686
publication De Extemo Tactus Organo. This anatomical
treatise, though less detailed about the surface of the hand than
that of Dr Crew, delves further beneath the surface. Malpighi's
anatomical work was so outstanding that one of the layers of the
skin was named :stratum Malpighi" after him. It was not until
1798, however, that J C Mayer of Germany theorised that the
arrangements of friction ridges were unique.
In 1823, Professor Johannes Evangelist Purkinje published the most
detailed description of fingerprints to have appeared anywhere up to
that time. Professor Purkinje's thesis entitled A Commentary on
the Physiological Examination of the Organs of Vision and the
Cutaneous System describes, with illustrations, nine fingerprint
patterns classified in Latin. From his illustrations, it can be seen
that the Latin classifications refer to what Henry would
later name arches, tented arches, loops, wholes and twinned loops.
Purkinje's research was purely anatomical, and he made no mention of
individuals being identified by the patterns that he described.
However, he recommended further research, and others soon took up
his challenge.
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Sir
William Herchel
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However, it was not until 1858 that the first practical application
of the science was made, when an English administrator in India, Sir
William Herschel, commenced placing the inked palm impressions and,
later, thumb impressions of some members of the local population on
contracts. These prints were used as a form of signature on the
documents because of the high level of illiteracy in India and
frequent attempts at forgery. Herschel also began fingerprinting all
prisoners in jail.
The greatest advances in fingerprint science in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries were probably made by Dr Henry Faulds, a
Scottish missionary doctor of the United Presbyterian Church. Faulds
first became interested in fingerprints after 1874 while working at
the hospital he established in Tsukiji, Tokyo, Japan. After careful
experiment and observation, he became convinced that fingerprint
patterns did not change, that the fingerprint patterns on the
fingers where highly variable and that superficial injury did not
alter them, they returned to their former design as the injury
healed.
In a letter written to Nature in October 1880, Faulds relates
how he took many sets of fingerprints and palmprints and studied
them, as Grew had done, with a botanical lens. He further described
the pattern formations on the fingers, referred to "loops"
and "whorls" and stating how good sets of fingerprints may
be obtained by the use of "a common slate or smooth board of
any kind, or a sheet of tin, spread over very thinly with printer's
ink. This technique, still in use today, appears to be a botanical
technique called nature-printing. Fauld's most important conclusion
was that fingerprints do not change and that fingermarks (that is,
latent prints) left on objects by bloody or greasy fingers "may
lead to the scientific identification of criminals".
