More than 2,000 years before
William Peterson or Marg Helgenberger prowled Las Vegas to collect
evidence and solve crimes, the attending physician for Julius Caesar
stated that of the 23 wounds on his body, only one was fatal. Fast
forward to 1247 when the first textbook of forensic medicine was
published in China. Nearly 400 years later the first book on document
examination was published in France. The wheels of progress ground
slowly until 1829 when Scotland Yard was established - a mere six
years later theYard used the first bullet comparison to catch a
murderer.
After that the discoveries
came fast and furiously. Here are just a few:
- 1836 – James Marsh develops a test for arsenic in tissues
- 1853 – First test for hemoglobin
- 1863 – First published paper on time-since-death determinations using temperature
- 1883 – Alphonse Bertillon invents anthropometry to identify and differentiate criminals
- 1891 – First book published describing the use of physical evidence to solve crimes
- 1892 – Francis Galton classifies fingerprints into the basic patterns that are still used today
Enter the computer. Thanks
to technology, information can now be collected in databases and
shared across borders. One such database is IAFIS - the Integrated
Automated Fingerprint Identification System – the national
fingerprint and criminal history system. It is the largest biometric
database in the world, housing the fingerprints and criminal
histories for more than 70 million subjects in the criminal master
file, along with more than 34 million civil prints. According to
fbi.gov the average response time for IAFIS is 27 minutes. Compare
that to the weeks or months spent combing over paper records in the
past and consider that in 2010 IAFIS processed over 61 million
submissions!
But wait! There's more.
About twenty five years ago, the use of DNA matching became an
integral part of solving crimes, and in 1995 the world's first
national DNA database was set up in the UK. The US followed a short
time later, and thanks to this wonder of science criminals have been
caught, cold cases have been solved and innocent people have been
released from prison.
I'll never look at those
sticky fingerprints on the kitchen counter the same way again! How
about you?
It is absolutely amazing what that little fingerprint or drop of blood or swab in the mouth can do. Thank you for such an interesting post.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your post. It's interesting to see all the forensic and "crime science" discoveries on a timeline. :)
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting how far technology has come. Now they can go back to old crimes and nab the perpetrator or free someone.
ReplyDeleteI was watching something about a felon they caught because of the use of new technologies and he committed the crime back in the forties or fifties.
thanks for sharing
Fingerprints certainly tell their own stories!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you enjoyed the post. I was surprised at how far back the discoveries go.
ReplyDelete