1784 In Lancaster, England, John Toms was convicted of murder on the basis of the torn edge of wad of newspaper in a pistol matching a remaining piece in his pocket. This was one of the first documented uses of physical matching.
1800s Thomas Bewick, an English naturalist, used engravings of his own fingerprints to identify books he published.
1810 Eugne Fran?ois Vidocq, in return for a suspension of arrest and a jail sentence, made a deal with the police to establish the first detective force, the S?ret? of Paris. The first recorded use of question document analysis occurred in Germany. A chemical test for a particular ink dye was applied to a document known as the Konigin Hanschritt.
1813 Mathiew Orfila, a Spaniard who became professor of medicinal/forensic chemistry at University of Paris, published Traite des Poisons Tires des Regnes Mineral, Vegetal et Animal, ou Toxicologie General l. Orfila is considered the father of modern toxicology. He also made significant contributions to the development of tests for the presence of blood in a forensic context and is credited as the first to attempt the use of a microscope in the assessment of blood and semen stains.
1823 John Evangelist Purkinji, a professorprofessor of anatomy at the University of Breslau, Czecheslovakia, published the first paper on the nature of fingerprints and suggested a classification system based on nine major types. However, he failed to recognize their individualizing potential.
1828 William Nichol invented the polarizing light microscope.
1830s Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian statistician, provided the foundation for Bertillon’s work by stating his belief that no two human bodies were exactly alike.
1831 Leuchs first noted amylase activity in human saliva.
1835 Henry Goddard, one of Scotland Yard’s original Bow Street Runners, first used bullet comparison to catch a murderer. His comparison was based on a visible flaw in the bullet which was traced back to a mold.
1836
James Marsh, an Scottish chemist, was the first to use toxicology (arsenic detection) in a jury trial.
1839
H. Bayard published the first reliable procedures for the microscopic detection of sperm. He also noted the
different microscopic characteristics of various different substrate fabrics.
1851
Jean Servais Stas, a chemistry professorprofessor from Brussels, Belgium, was the first successfully to identify
vegetable poisons in body tissue.
1853
Ludwig Teichmann, in Kracow, Poland, developed the first microscopic crystal test for hemoglobin using
hemin crystals.
1854
An English physician, Maddox, developed dry plate photography, eclipsing M. Daguerre’s wet plate on tin
method. This made practical the photographing of inmates for prison records.
1856
Sir William Herschel, a British officer working for the Indian Civil service, began to use thumbprints on
documents both as a substitute for written signatures for illiterates and to verify document signatures.
1862
The Dutch scientist J. (Izaak) Van Deen developed a presumptive test for blood using guaiac, a West Indian
shrub.
1863
The German scientist Sch?nbein first discovered the ability of hemoglobin to oxidize hydrogen peroxide making
it foam. This resulted in first presumptive test for blood.
1864
Odelbrecht first advocated the use of photography for the identification of criminals and the documentation of
evidence and crime scenes.
1877
Thomas Taylor, microscopist to U.S. Department of Agriculture suggested that markings of the palms of the
hands and the tips of the fingers could be used for identification in criminal cases. Although reported in the
American Journal of Microscopy and Popular Science and Scientific American, the idea was apparently never
pursued from this source.
1879
Rudolph Virchow, a German pathologist, was one of the first to both study hair and recognize its limitations.
1880
Henry Faulds, a Scottish physician working in Tokyo, published a paper in the journal Nature suggesting that
fingerprints at the scene of a crime could identify the offender. In one of the first recorded uses of fingerprints
to solve a crime, Faulds used fingerprints to eliminate an innocent suspect and indicate a perpetrator in a
Tokyo burglary.
1882
Gilbert Thompson, a railroad builder with the U.S Geological Survey in New Mexico, put his own thumbprint
on wage chits to safeguard himself from forgeries.
1883
Alphonse Bertillon, a French police employee, identified the first recidivist based on his invention of
anthropometry.
1887
Arthur Conan Doyle published the first Sherlock Holmes story in Beeton’s Christmas Annual of London.
1889
Alexandre Lacassagne, professorprofessor of forensic medicine at the University of Lyons, France, was the
first to try to individualize bullets to a gun barrel. His comparisons at the time were based simply on the number
of lands and grooves.
1891
Hans Gross, examining magistrate and professor of criminal law at the University of Graz, Austria, published
Criminal Investigation, the first comprehensive description of uses of physical evidence in solving crime. Gross
is also sometimes credited with coining the word criminalistics.
1892
(Sir) Francis Galton published Fingerprints, the first comprehensive book on the nature of fingerprints and their
use in solving crime.
Juan Vucetich, an Argentinean police researcher, developed the fingerprint classification system that would
come to be used in Latin America. After Vucetich implicated a mother in the murder of her own children using
her bloody fingerprints, Argentina was the first country to replace anthropometry with fingerprints.
1894
Alfred Dreyfus of France was convicted of treason based on a mistaken handwriting identification by Bertillon.
1896
Sir Edward Richard Henry developed the print classification system that would come to be used in Europe and
North America. He published Classification and Uses of Finger Prints.
1898
Paul Jesrich, a forensic chemist working in Berlin, Germany, took photomicrographs of two bullets to
compare, and subsequently individualize, the minutiae.
1901
Paul Uhlenhuth, a German immunologist, developed the precipiten test for species. He was also one of the first
to institute standards, controls, and QA/QC procedures. Wassermann (famous for developing a test for
syphilis) and Sch?tze independently discovered and published the precipiten test, but never received due
credit.
1900
Karl Landsteiner first discovered human blood groups and was awarded the Nobel prize for his work in 1930.
Max Richter adapted the technique to type stains. This is one of the first instances of performing validation
experiments specifically to adapt a method for forensic science. Landsteiner’s continued work on the detection
of blood, its species, and its type formed the basis of practically all subsequent work.
1901
Sir Edward Richard Henry was appointed head of Scotland Yard and forced the adoption of fingerprint
identification to replace anthropometry.
Henry P. DeForrest pioneered the first systematic use of fingerprints in the United States by the New York
Civil Service Commission.
1902
professor R.A. Reiss, professor at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and a pupil of Bertillon, set up one
of the first academic curricula in forensic science. His forensic photography department grew into Lausanne
Institute of Police Science.
1903
The New York State Prison system began the first systematic use of fingerprints in United States for criminal
identification.
At Leavenworth State Prison, Kansas, Will West, a new inmate, was differentiated from resident convict Will
West by fingerprints, not anthropometry. They were later found to be identical twins.
1904
Oskar and Rudolf Adler developed a presumptive test for blood based on benzidine, a new chemical
developed by Merk.
1905
American President Theodore Roosevelt established Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
1910
Victor Balthazard, professor of forensic medicine at the Sorbonne, with Marcelle Lambert, published the first
comprehensive hair study, Le poil de l’homme et des animaux. In one of the first cases involving hairs, Rosella
Rousseau was convinced to confess to murder of Germaine Bichon. Balthazard also used photographic
enlargements of bullets and cartridge cases to determining weapon type and was among the first to attempt to
individualize a bullet to a weapon.
Edmund Locard, successor to Lacassagne as professor of forensic medicine at the University of Lyons,
France, established the first police crime laboratory.
Albert S. Osborne, an American and arguably the most influential document examiner, published Questioned
Documents.
1912
Masaeo Takayama developed another microscopic crystal test for hemoglobin using hemochromogen crystals.
1913
Victor Balthazard, professor of forensic medicine at the Sorbonne, published the first article on individualizing
bullet markings.
1915
Leone Lattes, professor at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Turin Italy, developed the first antibody test for
ABO blood groups. He first used the test in casework to resolve a marital dispute. He published L’Individualit?
del sangue nella biologia, nella clinica, nella medicina, legale, the first book dealing not only with clinical issues,
but heritability, paternity, and typing of dried stains.
1915
International Association for Criminal Identification, (to become The International Association of Identification
(IAI), was organized in Oakland, California.
1916
Albert Schneider of Berkeley, California first used a vacuum apparatus to collect trace evidence.
1918
Edmond Locard first suggested 12 matching points as a positive fingerprint identification.
1920
Locard published L’enquete criminelle et les methodes scientifique, in which appears a passage that may have
given rise to the forensic precept that “Every contact leaves a trace.”
Charles E. Waite was the first to catalog manufacturing data about weapons.
1920s
Georg Popp pioneered the use of botanical identification in forensic work.
Luke May, one of the first American criminalists, pioneered striation analysis in tool mark comparison,
including an attempt at statistical validation. In 1930 he published The identification of knives, tools and
instruments, a positive science, in The American Journal of Police Science.
Calvin Goddard, with Charles Waite, Phillip O. Gravelle, and John H Fisher, perfected the comparison
microscope for use in bullet comparison.
1921
John Larson and Leonard Keeler designed the portable polygraph.
1923
Vittorio Siracusa, working at the Inst