Alphonse Bertillon was a French police officer and biometrics researcher who applied the anthropological technique of anthropometry to law enforcement creating an identification system based on physical measurements.
10 Facts About Alphonse Bertillon
2.
Alphonse Bertillon was a son of statistician Louis-Adolphe Bertillon and younger brother of the statistician and demographer Jacques Bertillon.
3.
Alphonse Bertillon used the famous La Sante Prison in Paris for his activities, facing jeers from the prison inmates as well as police officers.
4.
Alphonse Bertillon created many other forensics techniques, including the use of galvanoplastic compounds to preserve footprints, ballistics, and the dynamometer, used to determine the degree of force used in breaking and entering.
5.
The nearly 100-year-old standard of comparing 16 ridge characteristics to identify latent prints at crime scenes against criminal records of fingerprint impressions was based on claims in a 1912 paper Alphonse Bertillon published in France.
6.
Alphonse Bertillon was a witness for the prosecution in the Dreyfus affair in 1894 and again in 1899.
7.
Alphonse Bertillon testified as a handwriting expert and claimed that Alfred Dreyfus had written the incriminating document.
8.
Alphonse Bertillon claimed that his graphological system was based on mathematical probability calculus.
9.
The specific anthropological technique practiced by Alphonse Bertillon is often called the Alphonse Bertillon system.
10.
Alphonse Bertillon's photo is currently located in the St Paul police department archives.