Fingerprints have been found on ancient Babylonian clay tablets. They are excellent in establishing the identity of individuals and hence widely used to track down criminals. However, this is only possible because they have been systematically classified, making it easy to compare new prints with the ones on record.
British scientist Francis Galton devised a basic classification after confirming that every fingerprint is different. Galton estimated that there is only 1 in 64 billion chance of a false positive, which happens if two individuals have the same fingerprint. An Argentine police officer named Juan Vucetich created the method of recording the fingerprints of individuals on file by studying Galton’s pattern types. He set up the world’s first fingerprint bureau in 1892.
A fingerprint bureau was established in Kolkata in 1897. Azizul Haque and Hem Chandra Bose were the two fingerprint experts in Kolkata. They co-devised a system that became popular. It was named the Henry Classification System, after their supervisor Edward Henry.
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