Key Facts
Henry Faulds was a medical missionary who opened a hospital in Japan in 1873. During that time, he conducted research on friction ridges on both humans and monkeys. He became the first person to publish a journal article on the value of friction ridges for crime identification and individualization.
At the same time, Alphonse Bertillon, a member of the French Police, began to develop a model to use anthropometry, the measurement of various body parts, to use to identify individuals. For instance, height, reach, trunk, length of head, width of head, length of right ear, width of right ear etc. This classification system was successful and he was promoted to the Chief of the Department of Judicial Identify in 1888. This system became the most widely used to identify criminals throughout most of the western world until about 1914.
As friction ridges became more prevalent, fingerprints were added to the anthropometric records. This called for a total of 11 body measurements, 2 photographs, and a set of all 10 fingerprints.
Faulds’ research and publications were incredibly important for the development of Live Scan Fingerprinting.Â
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