FALSE FINGERPRINTS -- A NEW ASPECT.

This article focuses on the methods of falsifying fingerprints and the recognition of these possibilities in technical identification. Use of ink fingerprinting for identification purposes appears to be an age old custom. However, ancient literature is not entirely clear whether the patterns of papillary lines played a role in it, although one certainly finds that fingerprints were being placed upon deeds. If this fact had been stated anywhere, it surely would now be known exactly how these prints served for identification in those early times. Fingerprints has become a weapon in the combat against crime. However, attempts of imitation of fingerprints were to be foreseen, to sidetrack the police of even to incriminate an innocent person. A fingerprint may well prove a success if on the usual thorough routine inspection it would pass as genuine; eventually also in regard to its placing. But no sooner is its genuineness suspected, and consequently the fingerprint examined with all the scientific devices that are not ordinarily available for routine examination, than it becomes doubtful as to whether a forgery could go undetected.