WORLD ACHIEVEMENT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 117, 18 April 1939, Page 9

WORLD ACHIEVEMENT

FINGER-PRINTS. We may be sure that the day will come when every birth certificate will bear a huger-print of the owner. Lvery Government will have some strong building set apart for (lie storing of millions of finger-prints— eaeli building a kind of Somerset House, and in them will be birth certificates with their respective print.- so that no one inav ever nans unidentilied.

For the knowledge we have to-day of linger-priiits is an achievement of outstanding interest and value to the community. Finger-prints wore known to tlic Chinese long centuries ago, hut a scientific study of them with a view to utilising the knowledge gained was not introduced into Flighted before Sir Francis Gallon became the godfather of the system.

He it was who nil owed how fingerprints might be made a sure label for every man, woman and child in the Umpire, for lie declared that the chance of any two lingor-prints being alike was not one in 00.000 million. There is, therefore, a scheme on loot (and it is of world-wide interest) to make the recording of linger prints a universal custom like that of registering a birth. This in all tin' more important now because a system of indexing millions of finger-prints lias been evolved, itself a triumph of skill and patience, and any impression can be classified as an Arch, a Loup, a Whorl, or a. Composite, that is, a variation of the other three kinds.

At Hie moment the lingc r-priut system is in operation in Great Britain, the United States, aml Fiance, but only with a view to keeping a watch nil criminal classes. The extension of the idea is bound to come, however. — (L)