DeForrest, Henry P.

1864–1948
AMERICAN
PHYSICIAN

Henry Pelouze DeForrest (also deForest) is an important figure in the history of fingerprinting. Born in 1864, in Futon, New York, DeForrest was educated at Cornell University and received his medical degree from Columbia University. He became a surgeon and obstetrician in New York City. He was a surgeon with the New York City Police Department from 1902 to 1912, and was also the Chief Medical Examiner for the city's Municipal Civil Service Commission from 1912 to 1919. From 1903 to 1921, DeForrest was an associate professor of obstetrics at the New York Post Graduate Hospital and Medical School.

In 1902, while with the police department, DeForrest was asked to devise a system to scrutinize potential civil service employees to lessen the practice of having a person substitute for the actual candidate in the qualifying civil service exam. Drawing on the knowledge of the unique identification power of the fingerprint , DeForrest recommended the use of fingerprint identification. Beginning on December 19, 1902, the first person was fingerprinted in the new fingerprinting system that was subsequently complied.

This was actually the second use of fingerprinting in the United States. But DeForrest's accomplishment is significant, as it represented the first fingerprint file established in the United States, and the first use of fingerprinting by a U.S. government agency.

In 1903, spurred on by the success of the Civil Service experience, the systematic use of fingerprinting in criminal identification began in the United States, when the New York State Prison adopted the fingerprint system.

DeForrest's pioneering fingerprinting efforts paved the way for the subsequent widespread adoption of fingerprinting as an identification (and subseqently as a forensic identification) tool. In modern times, databases such as the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI ) houses millions of fingerprint patterns, which are available to law enforcement agencies worldwide.

DeForrest also invented the dactyloscope, a machine that records fingerprint patterns. The dactyloscope has found widespread use in fingerprint-based identification systems in airport customs facilities and in other applications where admittance or credit acceptance requires personal identification. DeForrest died in 1948.

see also Fingerprint; Integrated automated fingerprint identification system.