Finger prints

The patterns on the thumb and fingers were first discussed at length by Purkenje in 1823, in a University Thesis or _Commentatio_. I have translated the part that chiefly concer...

It will be the aim of this chapter to show how to make really good and permanent impressions of the fingers. It is very easy to do so when the principles of the art are understo...

We shall speak in this chapter of the aid that finger prints can give to personal identification, supposing throughout that facilities exist for taking them well and cheaply, an...

The same familiar patterns recur in every large collection of finger prints, and the eye soon selects what appear to be typical forms; but are they truly "typical" or not? By a...

The palms of the hands and the soles of the feet are covered with two totally distinct classes of marks. The most conspicuous are the creases or folds of the skin which interest...

the several fingers of the same person. Hence we are justified in assuming that the patterns are partly dependent on constitutional causes, in which case it would indeed be stra...

In this chapter the system of classification by Arches, Loops, and Whorls described in Chapter V. will be used for indexing two, three, six or ten digits, as the case may be.

The data used in this chapter are the prints of 5000 different digits, namely, the ten digits of 500 different persons; each digit can thus be treated, both separately and in co...

The object of this chapter is to give an approximate numerical idea of the value of finger prints as a means of Personal Identification. Though the estimates that will be made a...

The evidence that the minutiae persist throughout life is derived from the scrutiny and comparison of various duplicate impressions, one of each pair having been made many years...

The palmar surface of the hands and the soles of the feet, both in men and monkeys, are covered with minute ridges that bear a superficial resemblance to those made on sand by w...

The employment of impressions of the hand or fingers to serve as sign-manuals will probably be found in every nation of importance, but the significance attached to them differs...

The races whose finger prints I have studied in considerable numbers are English, pure Welsh, Hebrew, and Negro; also some Basques from Cambo in the French Pyrenees, twenty mile...

Fig. 2. Order on a camp sutler by Mr. Gilbert Thompson, who used his finger print for the same purpose as the scroll-work in cheques, viz. to ensure the detection of erasures 27

Some of those who have written on finger marks affirm that they are transmissible by descent, others assert the direct contrary, but no inquiry hitherto appears to justify a def...