Advances in Fingerprint Technology.pdf

much of his inspired research. For example, he pondered on the possibility
of an intellectual aspect of fingerprint pattern distribution, and accordingly
in one experiment he filed fingerprints into three categories:
1. Titled persons
2. Idiots
3. Farm laborers from Dorset and Somerset
He also fingerprinted a large family that included twin children.
On one of the last pages in Photography III is a monument to early
American fingerprint lore; a receipt reading:
8th August 1882
Mr. Jones, Sutler, will pay to
Lying Bob seventy dollars.
Gilbert Thompson.
Written at the bottom left of the document is an arch pattern, in purple ink,
with 75 00/100 written across the top. Sir Francis Galton was a great fingerprint
pioneer as well as a man of considerable talent in many other areas. However,
British fingerprint experts do not use the expression “Galton Ridges,” which
is much in vogue in the U.S.
Early Fingerprint Usage in Other Countries
Germany
From the first thesis by Hintz in 1747, in which spiral shapes on the skin of
the hands and feet were discussed, numerous German researchers noted
papillary ridges, including Schroeter, Huschke, Welker, Kollman, and Eber.
In 1902, while studying law in Munich, Robert Heindl (1883–1958) read in
an English magazine about the use of a fingerprint classification system and
wrote to India for details. He stressed to German police authorities that they
should use fingerprints for identifying people, and the first fingerprint bureau
in Germany was set up in Dresden on April 1, 1903. However, Heindl still
met resistance because many German police forces still thought the Bertillon
system was superior. Nevertheless, in 1903, three other German police forces
commenced fingerprinting: Augsburg, Hamburg, and Nuremburg. In 1912,
a conference of all German police forces took place in Berlin, at which it was
concluded that identification by fingerprints was superior to identification
by the Bertillon system, and in 1911 the transition took place.