IDENTIFICATION BY FINGER-TIPS.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 11498, 3 February 1903, Page 5

IDENTIFICATION BY FINGER-TIPS.

■ Herr Camilla Windt, chief of the Vienna Identification Office, who introduced: into Austria the finger-tip system <m a means of identifying criminals, which, as many people know, hongs on the permanent character of the so-called :pa>plllary lines on me inner side of the hand or fingers, has just delivered a lecture on the subject. The flnger»-tips sre lightly touched with a blackened metal plate, ami tlhen gently pressed on a sheet of paper. Herr Windt showed, with the aid of the eciopUcon, how fingermarks, invisible to the naked eye, could be lendered vfirible. At tiis request one of the audience touohedl a glass plate. The lecturer beepriakled it with a powder, and straightway the finger impreesionu became visible "enough to be projected on a wall of the Toom by the eciopticon. Criminals often leave behind them involuntary impKseiona of tnedr fingers on pieces of fnrlihrare and wuidow-.paiww, and daetylosocopy .places in the 'hands of the police a means of identification where the criminals are old offenders. Anonymous letters, too, bear traces not dreamt of* in the philosophy of £h<ar authors, but -which ore nwerthelese on open boot to the expert dadtylometrirt.