Thesis - Instituto de Telecomunicações

2.2. BIOMETRICS TECHNOLOGIES 17Figure 2.1: Frontispiece from Bertillon’s Identification anthropométrique (1893), demonstratingthe measurements one takes for his anthropometric identification system (publicdomain).The history of biometrics starts with Alphonse Bertillon [161] when he created a systematicmethod to identify criminals. He selected a set of anthropomorphic measures of severalbody parts, a description of the appearance of the body parts and details about the person’smovements and even some descriptions about the moral and mental characteristics. Themethod also included information on peculiar marks on the surface of the body caused bydisease, accidents or deformations (such as scars, tattooing and warts). Figure 2.1 presentsthe first page of a manual from Bertillon with the anthropomorphic measures depicted.The researchers Henry Faulds, William Herschel and Sir Francis Galton were, independently,the pioneers that introduced fingerprints as a forensic system. They provided thebasis for the fingerprint to be considered as a unique personal characteristic. Automatic