ABSTRACT
There is no branch of detective science which is so important and so much neglected as the art of tracing footsteps. Happily, I have always laid great stress upon it, and much practice has made it second nature to me. I saw the heavy footmarks of the constables, but I saw also the track of the two men who had first passed through the garden. It was easy to tell that they had been before the others, because in places their marks had been entirely obliterated by the others coming upon the top of them. In this way my second link was formed, which told me that the nocturnal visitors were two in number, one remarkable for his height (as I calculated from the length of his stride), and the other fashionably dressed, to judge from the small and elegant impression left by his boots. [Sherlock Holmes to Doctor Watson.]
— Arthur Conan Doyle:
A Study in Scarlet (1887)
The case reports each year contain many instances of the use of foot impression evidence, in a wide variety of settings including
both
two-dimensional and threedimensional impressions, whether it is footprints in dust, plaster, blood, glass panes, paper, carpeting, oils or other petroleum products, or impressions in soil, mud, or snow.
