When was fingerprinting first used?

In 1877, William Herschel of the Indian Civil Service used fingerprints to ensure that Army pensioners in Hooghly, West Bengal, did not draw their pensions more than once. He made the men 'sign' for their money by leaving impressions of their fingerprints (of which no two sets are alike, even from identical twins), and kept a record of the payments and the prints.

The system was used as well in the local jail to stop people from employing substitutes to serve their sentences, and fingerprints were also used to sign legal documents.

Herschel's technique was improved upon by the scientist Sir Francis Galton in his book 'Fingerprints', in 1892. Also in 1892, Juan Vucetich, an officer in the Argentine Police Force is credited with making the first criminal fingerprint identification, after studying Galton's Book. He successfully proved that a bloody fingerprint found at a murder scene could only belong to one Francisca Rojas.

In 1897, the world's first Fingerprint Bureau was opened in Calcutta, India. Great Britain followed in 1901, and the United States in 1906.