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A newspaper headline from 1902 (Figure 2) neatly sums up this story.
Before fingerprinting became the standard for identifying criminals in the late 1800s, Alphonse Bertillon singlehandedly created an identifi cation system that was based on a complex series of physical measurements and photographs. He called his system Anthropometry, and it was adopted and used by countries all over the world - from England, France, and Switzerland to Russia and in many parts of the US. Anthropometry was a towering achievement. For the fi rst time, records of extremely detailed information about criminals could be maintained, organized, and accessed in order to identify the identity of a suspect. Bertillon was also a pioneer in the use of the camera for criminal identification purposes, and he is often credited as the inventor of the criminal mugshot. Although cameras had been utilized by police departments for several decades, Bertillon indisputably formalized the use of photography as a system of criminal identifi cation and documentation in the late 1880s.
Bertillon offi cially established the Anthropometric Service within the Paris Prefecture in 1885, and his system would enjoy years of success. Toward the end of the century, however, the focus on fingerprinting as a tool for identifying criminals began to attract many law enforcement practitioners. Bertillon's anthropometric system, while theoretically sound, could be rendered virtually useless due to factors such as the variables of the measuring tools or the quality of the training of the person taking the measurements. One writer commented:
"I have seen so-called experts measuring prisoners without even knowledge ofwhere to place the instruments, obtaining results so ludicrously inaccurate as to eliminate any chance of identification." [1]
Bertillon strongly resisted the fi eld of fingerprinting as an enemy to his beloved measuring system. Even though he respected his...