How does fingerprinting work? There are different types of fingerprints; what are they called and how are they different?
Fingerprinting is thought to have been used first by the Chinese in the eighth century BC as a means of verification of legal documents. They were first used for identification in a systematic way in the 1800s. The skin on the fingertips of a persons hand has a distinctive pattern of ridges which is unique to that person and remains the same throughout the persons life. Sir Francis Galton developed a system for the classification of fingerprints which was first used regularly in 1891. To keep the classification relatively simple for our purposes I shall only mention that there are three main types of fingerprints. These are the arch, the loop and the whorl. The ridges in an arch, not surprisingly, form an arch shape. A loop is rather more elongated than an arch and may be at quite an angle on the fingertip. A whorl is like a number of concentric closed circles. When someone has their fingerprints taken they press the tips of all their fingers on a pad soaked in special fingerprinting i
