history

This page considers the history of biometrics, from bertillonage to retina scanning and beyond.

It covers -

• introduction - why bother with an historical perspective?
• trajectories - what has driven the history of biometrics and some pointers to historical overviews
• metrification - standardisation, statistics, biometry and biometrics in the Enlightenment and Victorian eras
• fingerprinting - the golden age of biometrics?
• geometries - electronic data capture and pattern recognition
• magic bullets in the war on terror? - contemporary developments as a reflection of concerns about terrorism and identity theft
• landmarks - key dates in the history of biometrics

    introduction

Considering the history of biometrics is of value because it offers insights into both identification/authentication issues and into the way that biometric mechanisms have been marketed and implemented over the past 120 years, with -

• advocacy by enthusiasts, whose infactuation with a technology or an attribute has on occasion led to claims that a particular biometric offers a 'silver bullet' for problems that it cannot - and should not - fully address
• opportunism by researchers, institutions and government agencies, evident in funding of particular studies or initiatives and use of a technology to legitimate an organisation whose mandate is under challenge
• an interaction of policymakers, commercial promoters and the media that results in inappropriate expectations about the scope and efficacy of particular solutions
• proposed universalist implementations - eg mandatory fingerprinting of all people or social groups - that conflict with widespread social values (eg privacy) and are tied to transitory anxieties or threats such as the anarchist menace of the early 1920s
• normalisation of some technologies, which have 'disappeared into the background' and for most people only reappear as a plot device in pulp fiction

    trajectories

Although modern biometrics centres on electronic data acquisition, analysis and transmission - in particular the use of pattern recognition algorithms for automated matching - its origins date from before the telegraph.

Elsewhere on this site we have thus pointed to cow nose prints and human foot prints as prototypes of the modern fingerprint, mechanisms that arguably were more significant in retrospect rather than in day to day practice.

Contemporary biometrics is attribuble to -

• the emphasis on identifying and in particular quantifying the natural world that gained pace during the Enlightenment and resulted in developments such as the metric system of measurement
• an increasingly sophisticated statistics-based conceptualisation of physiological and social phenomena during the Victorian and Edwardian eras that led to the opinion polling industry and social science breakthroughs such as the Kinsey reports
• awareness of that unique (or nearly unique) physiological and behavioural characteristics could be identified on an individual by individual basis
• an increasing capacity in recent decades to express those characteristics in digital formats and to use pattern recognition software in processing collections of such information.

There has been no comprehensive historical account of biometrics.

A perspective is provided by Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices since the French Revolution (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 2001) edited by Jane Caplan & John Torpey and by the latter's The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship & the State (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2000). Other works on passports and travel control are highlighted here.

For policing see in particular Marie-Christine Leps' Apprehending the Criminal: The Production of Deviance in Nineteenth-Century Discourse (Durham: Duke Uni Press 1992) and The Criminal and His Scientists: Essays on the History of Criminality (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2003) edited by Peter Becker & Richard Wetzell.

Other works and practices are discussed in the Identity Theft, Identity Fraud profile elsewhere on this site.

    landmarks

1684 Nehemiah Grew's paper on hands

1686 Marcello Malpighi's De Extemo Tactus Organo

1798 J C Mayer suggests that prints are unique

1823 Johannes Purkinje's A Commentary on the Physiological Examination of the Organs of Vision & the Cutaneous System

1880 Henry Faulds' letter in Nature on fingerprints

1882 Bertillonage introduced by Paris police

1884 Francis Galton opens Anthropometric Laboratory at International Health Exhibition

1892 Rojas case in Argentina is first conviction based on fingerprints?

1892 Galton's Finger Prints

1900 Belper Committee in UK establishes fingerprinting as basis for criminal identification

1902 Denmark Hill case in UK - first UK use of fingerprint to connect accused with crime scene

1902 fingerprinting introduced in NSW prisons

1902 New York Civil Service Commission fingerprints applicants to prevent cheating

1903 'Leavenworth Incident' seals fate of Bertillonage

1903 support for Bertillonage evaporates after Fort Leavenworth case

1903 fingerprinting introduced in New Zealand prisons

1903 NSW Police Fingerprint Bureau established

1903 Victorian police fingerprint unit established

1904 South Australia police fingerprint unit established

1904 Queensland police fingerprint unit established

1904 New York Police Department introduces fingerprint register

1905 first prosecution in New Zealand based on fingerprints alone

1906 US military fingerprint register established

1905 first UK use of fingerprint evidence in murder trial

1910 Jennings case - first use of fingerprints in US murder trial

1912 Tasmanian police fingerprint unit established

1918 Edmond Locard's '12 Point Match' hypothesis

1928 Western Australia police fingerprint unit established

1936 ophthalmologist Frank Burch suggests iris-based identification

1941 NSW Police provides Central Fingerprint Bureau for federal government

1943 Cummins & Midlo's An Introduction To Dermatoglyphics

1957 Northern Territory police fingerprint unit established

1960 automated fingerprint identification scheme

1967 ACT police fingerprint unit established

1976 MITRE evaluation program (fingerprint, hand, voice) in US

1977 computer recognition of faces

1978 patent for retinal identification

1980 first authentication by keystroke timing

1980 Australian Federal Police Fingerprint Bureau

1983 automatic signature verification

1984 Jeffreys' Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP) characterised as 'DNA Fingerprinting'.

1985 UK police use forensic DNA profiling

1986 Australian National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS)

1987 Pitchfork case in UK uses DNA profiling of 5,000 men in community to clear suspect and identify perpetrator

1987 Safir and Flom gain iris-recognition patent

1987 Robert Melias becomes first person in UK convicted on basis of DNA evidence

1988 closure of Central Fingerprint Bureau in Australia

1989 Dotson in US becomes first person to have conviction overturned on basis of DNA evidence

1989 first Australian court case involving DNA evidence

1993 Daugman's IEEE paper on iris recognition

1994 Daugman gains patent for iris-recognition algorithms

1995 world's first national criminal DNA database established in UK

1997 Victoria becomes first Australian jurisdiction with legislation regulating use of a DNA database

1998 FBI establishes National DNA Index System, enabling city, county, state and federal law enforcement agencies to compare DNA profiles electronically

1998 Zhang's paper on palmprint recognition

2002 United States v. Llera Plaza

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