Alphonse Bertillon, a file clerk and also the father of forensic science, had only a few days left to prove that his system of identifying criminals would revolutionize police work. With only a ruler, a tape measure, and calipers he took eleven physical measurements including: body height, length of the forearms, thickness of the head, etc. Each measurement was taken three different times, then averaged together to classify the criminal as small, medium, or large. Bertillon called this system, anthropometry, which had three assumptions: after 20-years-old the bone measurements do not change, the chance of two adults having the same value for two measurements was sixteen to one, and two adults having the same for all eleven measurements was four million, one hundred ninety one thousand, three hundred and four to one. By February 20, 1883, he and two of his assistants had processed over one thousand eight hundred criminals.
Edward Henry, a British police official, was on a train heading to Calcutta when he started thinking about fingerprints. The fingerprints can be seen clearly under a magnifying glass, but the pores along the ridges are what is not seen. These pores put out an oily perspiration, which is what leaves the fingerprints on almost anything a person touches. Your fingerprints are unchangeable, people have tried hiding them by scrubbing their fingertips with sandpaper, burning them with acid, and peeled away the skin, but as the wounds heal, the same fingerprint comes back. Working with Henry was pioneering scientist, Francis Galton. Galton was fascinated by the human body, especially the tiny surface details. After collecting fingerprints, Galton came to a few conclusions: each person has ten different fingerprints and the probability of two people having the same fingerprints is sixty-four billion to one. Galton used three separate patternsarches, loops, and whorls. Henry, on the other hand used five plain arches, tented arches, radial loops, ulnar loops, and whorls. During the first year in use, the Henry system identified three times more criminals than Bertillon’s system. Karl Landsteiner, an Austrian physiologist, came to understand a code that could distinguish one type of human blood from another. Before law enforcements could use his method of distinguishing blood, they needed something to help them know that a stain was actually blood and to know if it was human blood, or blood from an animal. At the turn of the twentieth century, one of these goals was achieved. A tool called the spectroscope made it easier to prove if it was a blood stain, or a stain from another substance. Landsteiner soon identified three different blood types Group A, Group B, and Group C. …show more content…
DNA can be found everywhere in us, anything that escapes the body has DNA on it. Jeffreys had no interest in murder cases and crime, but two years later, the police were coming to him. Ten miles from Jeffreys’ laboratory, two 15-year-old girls were raped and strangled, the rapist/killer left no fingerprints, the only evidence the police had was the semen that was left on the girls’ clothing. The murders happened three years apart, but was assumed to be the same killer. Jeffreys tested the semen, and informed police that they only had to catch one killer, because the same man killed both
Edward Henry, a British police official, was on a train heading to Calcutta when he started thinking about fingerprints. The fingerprints can be seen clearly under a magnifying glass, but the pores along the ridges are what is not seen. These pores put out an oily perspiration, which is what leaves the fingerprints on almost anything a person touches. Your fingerprints are unchangeable, people have tried hiding them by scrubbing their fingertips with sandpaper, burning them with acid, and peeled away the skin, but as the wounds heal, the same fingerprint comes back. Working with Henry was pioneering scientist, Francis Galton. Galton was fascinated by the human body, especially the tiny surface details. After collecting fingerprints, Galton came to a few conclusions: each person has ten different fingerprints and the probability of two people having the same fingerprints is sixty-four billion to one. Galton used three separate patternsarches, loops, and whorls. Henry, on the other hand used five plain arches, tented arches, radial loops, ulnar loops, and whorls. During the first year in use, the Henry system identified three times more criminals than Bertillon’s system. Karl Landsteiner, an Austrian physiologist, came to understand a code that could distinguish one type of human blood from another. Before law enforcements could use his method of distinguishing blood, they needed something to help them know that a stain was actually blood and to know if it was human blood, or blood from an animal. At the turn of the twentieth century, one of these goals was achieved. A tool called the spectroscope made it easier to prove if it was a blood stain, or a stain from another substance. Landsteiner soon identified three different blood types Group A, Group B, and Group C. …show more content…
DNA can be found everywhere in us, anything that escapes the body has DNA on it. Jeffreys had no interest in murder cases and crime, but two years later, the police were coming to him. Ten miles from Jeffreys’ laboratory, two 15-year-old girls were raped and strangled, the rapist/killer left no fingerprints, the only evidence the police had was the semen that was left on the girls’ clothing. The murders happened three years apart, but was assumed to be the same killer. Jeffreys tested the semen, and informed police that they only had to catch one killer, because the same man killed both