Fingerprints are nothing new. The delicate swirls, ridges, and patterns that lie at the tips of our fingers have long been recognized as a form of personal identification.

The ancients might not have realized the extreme uniqueness of every person’s fingerprints. But as far back as the reign of the Babylonian King Hammurapi (1792-1750 BCE), convicts were fingerprinted. In China as early as 246 BCE, fingerprints were used to “sign” legal contracts. In 1788 a German anatomist, Johann Christoph Andreas Mayer, proved and published that fingerprints are unique to each individual. The idea caught on so fast that by the mid-nineteenth century, data banks of fingerprints were being collected all over the world for identification purposes.

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