The following research can be found on wikipedia.com. Timeline There is no clear date at which fingerprinting was first used. However, significant modern dates documenting the use of fingerprints for positive identification are as follows: 1823: Jan Evangelista Purkyne, a professor of anatomy at the University of Breslau, published his thesis discussing 9 fingerprint patterns, but he did not mention the use of fingerprints to identify persons. 1880: The Scot Dr Henry Faulds published his first paper on the subject in the scientific journal Nature in 1880.[7] Returning to the UK in 1886, he offered the concept to the Metropolitan Police in London but it was dismissed.[8] 1892: Sir Francis Galton published a detailed statistical model of fingerprint analysis and identification and encouraged its use in forensic science in his book Finger Prints.[9] 1892: Juan Vucetich, an Argentine police officer who had been studying Galton pattern types for a year, made the first criminal fingerprint identification. He successfully proved Francisca Rojas guilty of murder after showing that the bloody fingerprint found at the crime scene was hers, and could only be hers. 1897: World's first Fingerprint Bureau opens in Calcutta (now Kolkata) India after the Council of the Governor General approved a committee report (on 12 June 1897) that fingerprints should be used for classification of criminal records. Working in the Calcutta Anthropometric Bureau (before it became the Fingerprint Bureau) were Azizul Haque and Hem Chandra Bose. Haque and Bose are the Indian fingerprint experts credited with primary development of the fingerprint classification system eventually named after their supervisor, Sir Edward Richard Henry. 1901: The first United Kingdom Fingerprint Bureau was founded in Scotland Yard. The Henry Classification System, devised by Sir Edward Richard Henry with the help of Haque and Bose, was accepted in England and Wales. 1902: Dr. Henry P. DeForrest used fingerprinting in the New York Civil Service.