Linda Jones · Fingerprinting Facts

How Fingerprints Are Formed on the Fingers

Fingerprints, like palmprints and footprints, appear on areas of the body where ridges are useful for providing reinforcement to the skin and friction for gripping. All primates and some other mammals such as koala bears have distinct fingerprints. Save for scarring and disease, they stay the same throughout life. No two are the same.

Fingerprints form on the hands and feet of a fetus between the 10th and 17th week as the middle layer of skin grows faster than the surface and the inner layer. After fingerprints form, they do not change throughout life—they are fully formed before birth.

How Fingerprints are Identified on Objects

We leave fingerprints everywhere as oils, sweat, and moisture on our hands transfer to objects. When fingerprints are invisible to the eye, they are called latent (hidden) prints. Sometimes we can see prints if we look carefully. Occassionally a person may leave visible prints from dirty hands if there is motor oil, blood, paint, or some other colored substance on the fingers. Fingerprints also show up when fingers are pressed into a soft substance such as butter, tacky paint, or window putty or a sticky object such as a strip of adhesive tape. There is no reliable method to determine the length of time that a fingerprint that has been left on an object. A faint print may be a new print, and a strong print may have survived for some time.

Archaelogical Evidence of Fingerprinting

On a cliff in Nova Scotia, prehistoric Native Americans have left us a rock petroglyph depicting a hand and fingers with ridges and lines. We also know from artifacts in Europe and Asia that, in ancient history, fingerprints were used to seal contracts. Evidence of the use of fingerprints as signatures dates back thousands of years to the ancient Chinese and Assyrians who used fingerprints on legal documents. In ancient Babylon, circa 1750 B.C.E., the right hand was pressed into clay tablets to sign business transactions and laws. In ancient China, thumb prints were pressed in clay to seal legal documents. Around the year 220, agreements were stamped with ink fingerprints in China. The idea existed, even then, that fingerprints were unique to the individual. The practice of using fingerprints on official papers continued through history, and shows up again in official governmental papers of 14th century Persia.

Fingerprinting as an Art and Science in the Modern World

1686 - Italy
Marcello Malpighi, a professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna, writes about the ridges, spirals and loops in the pads of human fingers.

1823 - Czechoslovakia
In 1823, John Evangelist Purkinje, a professor of anatomy at the University of Breslau, publishes a thesis including a discussion on 9 different fingerprint patterns.

1858 - England/India
Sir William Herschel, a Chief Magistrate in India, requires residents to sign contracts with handprints and fingerprints.

1870's - Scotland, Japan
Dr. Henry Faulds, while working as a missionary in Japan, is amazed to discover impressions of ancient fingerprints in achaeological artifacts. He writes about utilizing fingerprints for identification, identifying fingerprints at crime scenes, and using ink to make samples of people's fingerprints. Armed with new insights, Faulds exonerates a criminal suspect by illustrating a mismatch in prints left at the scene. Faulds classifies different types of prints.

1877 - Herschel suggests fingerprinting prisoners.

1880 - Faulds devises forms for collecting ink fingerprints. Faulds demonstrates the identification of a fingerprint left on a bottle. He writes to Charles Darwin, who forwards the findings to his cousin, Sir Francis Galton.

1882 - America
Gilbert Thompson suggests the use of thumbprints on checks to counter fraud.

1883 - America
Mark Twain in "Life on the Mississippi" writes about a murderer who was identified by fingerprints. He would return to the subject ten years later in "Pudd'n Head Wilson."

1888 - England
Sir Francis Galton, Darwin's cousin, finally makes room in his prolific studies for some observations of fingerprints as a means of identification. He soon confirms observations by the earlier fingerprinting pioneers. Galton designs a form for recording inked fingerprint impressions and defines three main patterns: loops, whorls, and arches.

1891/92 - Argentina
Juan Vucetich, a Police Official, begins the first fingerprint files based on Galton's three pattern types. He identifies a bloody fingerprint at a crime scene to implicate a criminal.

1892 - Galton publishes his book, "Fingerprints." Maintains that each person's fingerprints are unique.

1897 - India
Azizul Haque and Hem Chandra Bose, two Indian fingerprint experts, develop a system of fingerprint classification. Named for their supervisor, Sir Edward Richard Henry, the Henry classification system is still used today.

1900 - England
Sir Edward Richard Henry publishes "The Classification and Use of Fingerprints." England accepts fingerprinting as a major form of identification.

1902 - America
Dr. Henry P. DeForrest pioneers fingerprinting in America.

1915 - America
Inspector Harry H. Caldwell of the Oakland, California Police Department initiates the formation of the International Association for Identification (IAI). Sir Francis Galton's right index finger appears in the IAI logo.