ABSTRACT
February 1, 1790: The U.S. Supreme Court convened for the first time in New York.
1888: On this day in 1888, Alphonse Bertillon was appointed chief of the Service of Judicial Identity of the Paris Police. Born in 1853, and the son of medical professor Louis Bertillon, Alphonse Bertillon was a French criminologist and anthropologist who created the first system of physical measurements, photography, and record keeping that police could use to identify recidivist criminals. Before Bertillon, suspects could only be identified through eyewitness accounts and unorganized files of photographs. In 1883, the Parisian police adopted his anthropometric system, called signaletics or bertillonage. Bertillon identified individuals by measurements of the head and body, shape formations of the ear, eyebrow, mouth, eye, etc., individual markings such as tattoos and scars, and personality characteristics. One of Bertillon’s most important contributions to forensics was the systematic use of photography to document crime scenes and evidence. By the mid-1890s, Bertillon was an international celebrity because of articles in popular publications, exhibition displays, and international expositions. He was strongly opposed to those who advocated fingerprint identification; however, he eventually incorporated fingerprinting into his system. Bertillon also worked to further the development of other forensic scientific techniques, such as handwriting analysis, galvanoplastic compounds to preserve footprints and other impressions, ballistics, and a dynamometer that measured the degree of force used in breaking and entering.
