Fingerprints: The Origins of Crime Detection and the Murder Case that Launched Forensic Science. This item is unavailable.Fingerprints: The Origins of Crime Detection and the Murder Case that Launched Forensic Science

Now available in paperback -- the history of fingerprinting, as "fascinating, informative and as gripping as a great crime novel" --Simon Singh, author of Fermat's Enigma and The Code Book.

It is almost impossible to imagine that prior to the 20th century, there was no reliable way to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent. All that changed in Britain in 1905, when the bloody bodies of an elderly couple were discovered in their shop -- and a solitary fingerprint became the only piece of evidence . . .

Describes the controversial 1905 murder case in England that ultimately led to the common use of fingerprint identification, and discusses the role and technology of fingerprinting in modern-day forensics.