Overview of Website Resources

This website is part of a research project on the history of fingerprinting in 20th-century China from a global perspective. The project focuses on two aspects of this history: (1) the development of fingerprint identification as a tool of policing and forensics, and (2) how fingerprint patterning has been studied in the modern life sciences, especially in the fields of anthropology, human genetics, and medical genetics. The history of the latter is much less well known than that of the former, and one of the goals of this project is to fill that gap in our historical understanding.

 

This website has the following two goals:

 

(1) To provide educators in the humanities, social sciences, and STEM disciplines with resources for teaching the history and present-day circumstances of fingerprinting, with special attention given to the multifaceted interactions that have always existed between fingerprinting and scientific knowledge. This historical dynamic connects directly to how the field of latent fingerprint evidence is changing today.

 

(2) To provide resources for teaching the history of race in science and, specifically, how scientific disciplines such as physical anthropology and dermatoglyphics (the scientific study of fingerprints and palm patterning) have constructed notions of racial identity and difference in modern times. This has not only been an important part of the history of fingerprinting, but speaks to technical questions – still relevant today – about how fingerprint patterning is studied at the level of populations and not simply individuals.

 

Starting from these goals, this website provides two main resources:

 

• Modules: Short narratives (approximately 1-2 single-spaced pages each) that discuss particular historical and conceptual themes in the history of fingerprinting and its use today. These narratives (like the video lectures, described below) are based on peer-reviewed scholarship, including publications that have grown out of this research project.

 

• Video lectures: Short video lectures, composed of slides and voiceover, that provide additional detail about particular issues that are raised in the modules. Each video has a corresponding set of multiple choice and true/false questions that instructors can use to evaluate students’ comprehension of the material. Instructors should email daniel.asen@rutgers.edu for these materials.

 

The modules and video lectures can be assigned together (reading the narrative and watching the videos) or separately (only reading the narratives or only watching the videos). Furthermore, each module and video lecture can be assigned individually, in different combinations, or as a complete set.

 

For example, an assignment that focuses on introducing the field of latent print evidence could use the “Making Modern Fingerprinting” module and videos only (or could combine it with “Fingerprinting and Science Today,” which brings the narrative provided in “Making Modern Fingerprinting” up to the present). An assignment that is more focused on the use of fingerprints in the life sciences could focus on “Fingerprints and Science” and “Fingerprints, Race, and Population” instead.

 

See below for an overview of the themes and concepts that are covered in each of these resources. 

 

Modules

 

1. Introduction: What are Fingerprints?

 

• • Overview: Introduces the concept of friction ridge skin and its biological function. Introduces the idea that fingerprint identification is used for many applications in modern societies, not simply for criminal identification. Introduces the main questions and themes addressed in the other modules and video lectures of this website.

  • Linked video lecture:

    • Introduction: What are Fingerprints? (Note: The narration in this video is identical to the text of the module “Introduction: What are Fingerprints?”. In all other cases, the module text and video lecture narration are different.)

 

2. Making Modern Fingerprinting

 

• • Overview: Gives an example of how fingerprints were used in pre-modern China, before the introduction of modern fingerprinting. Discusses the development of modern fingerprint identification in British colonial India. Introduces “Bertillonage” (an identification method that relied on measurements of the body) and discusses how it was replaced by fingerprint identification. Briefly discusses 19th and 20th-century innovations in fingerprinting that have made the technique what it is today.

  • Linked video lectures:

    • Colonial Beginnings

    • Fingerprint Cards and the “Henry System”

    • “Bertillonage” and Identification by Body Measurements

    • New Developments

  • Additional resources, suitable for use as teaching materials or handouts (courtesy of Kimberlee Sue Moran):

    • Overviews of how crime scene fingerprints are collected and analyzed (click here and here)

 

3. “No Two Finger Prints Are Alike” 

 

• • Overview: Introduces the concept that fingerprints are individually unique (that “no two finger prints are alike,” in the words of a primary source quoted in this module). Introduces the concept of fingerprint minutiae and their importance in the field of latent fingerprint evidence. Introduces Simon A. Cole’s notion of the “fingerprint examiner’s fallacy” and why the individual uniqueness of fingerprints is no longer viewed as a sufficient basis for claims of accuracy and reliability in the field of latent fingerprint evidence.

  • Additional resources, suitable for use as teaching materials or handouts (courtesy of Kimberlee Sue Moran):

    • Overviews of the different fingerprint pattern-types and minutiae (click here and here)

 

4. Fingerprints and Science

 

• • Overview: Introduces the fact that fingerprints and palm patterning have been studied in the sciences as well as the term (“dermatoglyphics”) that is used to describe this field. Gives brief overview of history of dermatoglyphics, including its early ties to scientific racism and later connections to the study of human genetics and medical genetics. Explains some of the ways in which the scientific study of fingerprints differed from the use of fingerprints in personal identification. Introduces the concept that fingerprint variation can be studied at the level of populations (not simply individuals) and the fact that fingerprint patterning is influenced (but not completely determined) by genetics.

  • Linked video lectures:

    • Dermatoglyphics: The Scientific Study of Fingerprints

    • Fingerprints and the Study of Human Genetics

 

5. Fingerprints, Race, and Population

 

• • Overview: Introduces the fact that some of the earliest uses of fingerprint identification were connected to racist ideas and policies. Introduces the fact that a key area of dermatoglyphics was the study of supposed differences in the fingerprint patterning of racially-defined groups. Introduces the concept that race is “socially constructed,” not a biological fact that can be taken for granted. On this basis, explains why the scientific construction of “race” in dermatoglyphics was arbitrary and flawed. Describes one area of today’s research (variability and distribution of minutiae) that continues to investigate fingerprint characteristics at the level of populations and compares it with the earlier dermatoglyphics research that was focused on race.

• • Linked video lecture:

    • Fingerprints and Race

 

6. Fingerprinting and Science Today

 

• • Overview: Introduces the fact that dermatoglyphics has declined in importance (especially with the rise of molecular biology and DNA, which is used to investigate the same questions more effectively), but that fingerprint identification remains important today. Introduces the “Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward” report (2009) and its criticisms of the field of latent fingerprint evidence. Briefly discusses the research that is being done today to improve latent fingerprint evidence as well as the continuing influence of dermatoglyphics on today’s knowledge of fingerprinting.

• • Linked video lecture:

    • Fingerprinting in the 21st Century

 

Video lectures

 

Introduction: What are Fingerprints? [2:00] 

• What students will learn about:

  • Friction ridge skin and its biological function

  • The fact that fingerprint identification is used for various purposes in modern societies, not just solving crimes

  • This video also introduces the larger questions that are addressed in the other modules and video lectures of this website

• Note: The narration in this video is identical to the text of the module “Introduction: What are Fingerprints?”. In all other cases, the module text and video lecture narration are different.

 

Colonial Beginnings [5:45] 

• What students will learn about:

  • How and why British colonial India provided the setting for the early development of modern fingerprint identification practices

  • William J. Herschel (1833-1917) and the early use of fingerprint identification

  • Earlier precedents for the use of fingerprints in India and China

  • The role that fingerprint identification has played in modern times as a tool of government and bureaucracy

 

Fingerprint Cards and the “Henry System” [6:18] 

• What students will learn about:

  • The important role played by Juan Vucetich (1858-1925) and Edward R. Henry (1850-1931) in developing paper-based fingerprint registries

  • Why the development of these filing systems was such an important turning point in the history of modern identification practices

  • How fingerprints were classified, stored, and retrieved in the “Henry system”

 

“Bertillonage” and Identification by Body Measurements [4:24] 

• What students will learn about:

  • Alphonse Bertillon’s (1853-1914) system of identification by body measurements (“Bertillonage”)

  • The strengths and weaknesses of Bertillonage as an identification technique

  • The concept of “latent print” (or “latent fingerprint”)

  • Why Bertillonage was ultimately replaced by fingerprint identification as the most common identification technique

 

New Developments [4:43] 

• What students will learn about:

  • The widespread adoption of fingerprint identification during the early 20th century, including the development of large (paper-based) fingerprint registries by police agencies

  • Fingerprint and Identification Magazine, an early 20th-century publication on fingerprinting and law enforcement

  • Why filing and retrieving single fingerprints was a challenge and how this challenge was overcome by single-print filing systems such as the Battley system

  • The rise of Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS)

 

Dermatoglyphics: The Scientific Study of Fingerprints [5:11] 

• What students will learn about:

  • How fingerprints and palm patterning have been studied in the life sciences, including in anthropology, genetics, and medicine

  • The meaning of “dermatoglyphics,” a term that refers to the scientific study of ridged skin on fingers, palms, and soles

  • An overview of the history of dermatoglyphics, including the field’s decline in the late 20th century

 

Fingerprints and the Study of Human Genetics [3:53] 

• What students will learn about:

  • The role that genes play in determining one’s fingerprint patterns

  • Why genetics researchers working earlier in the 20th century believed that studying fingerprints could yield insights into human heredity

  • How one counts fingerprint ridges and calculates the “Total Finger Ridge Count”

  • What it means when we say that identical (monozygotic) twins have different fingerprint patterns

 

Fingerprints and Race [5:23] 

• What students will learn about:

  • The role that racism played in 19th and early 20th-century scientific understandings of “race” as well as other flawed assumptions that guided this work

  • The fact that studying differences in fingerprint patterning across different racially-defined populations constituted a major area of dermatoglyphics research throughout the 20th century

  • Furuhata Tanemoto (1891-1975) and the “Furuhata index,” a concept that was used in such studies

 

Fingerprinting in the 21st Century [4:23] 

• What students will learn about:

  • The late 20th-century decline of dermatoglyphics and the rise of molecular biology

  • The 2009 report of the National Research Council of the National Academies, “Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward”

  • What this report says about the field of latent fingerprint evidence

  • How researchers are working to improve the accuracy and reliability of latent fingerprint evidence today