Fingerprint identification began with the innovation of individuals such as Marcello Malpighi, John Purkinji, William Herschell, Henry Faulds and Sir Francis Galton. Marcello Malpighi noted in his treaties, “ridges and spirals and loops on fingerprints”.
In 1923 John Purkinji published his thesis discussing 9 fingerprint patterns. William Herschel began using fingerprints in July of 1858. As the chief magistrate of the Hooghly district in Juniper India he used fingerprints on native contracts. It had started as a whim but soon all contracts were signed with a fingerprint. Herschel collected his fingerprints and after a while began to note that the inked impressions could indeed, prove, disprove identity. During the 1870’s a British Superintendent at the Tsukiji hospital in Tokyo  was studying fingerprints on prehistoric pottery, this resulted in him making a study of “skin furrows”. This man was Dr Henry Faulds and his research culminated in the establishment of a method for fingerprint classification.
 In 1880 he was to publish an article in the scientific journal “Nautre”. Here he discussed the use of fingerprints as a means of personal identification, he is also credited with the first fingerprint identification of a greasy fingerprint left on an alcohol bottle.