History of Fingerprinting

 a.       Picture writing of a hand with ridge patterns was discovered in Nova Scotia. 

In ancient Babylon, fingerprints were used on clay tablets for business transactions. 

In ancient China, thumb prints were found on clay seals.

b.     In 1823, John Evangelist Purkinje, an anatomy professor at the University of Breslau, published his thesis discussing nine fingerprint patterns, but he too made no mention of the value of fingerprints for personal identification.

c.      Sir Francis Galton, a British anthropologist and a cousin of Charles Darwin, began his observations of fingerprints as a means of identification in the 1880's.  

d.       1908 U.S. Marine Corps begins using fingerprints.

e.       2011 The largest AFIS repository  in America is operated by the Department of Homeland Security's US Visit Program, containing over 100 million persons' fingerprints, many in the form of two-finger records.  The two-finger records are non-compliant with FBI and Interpol standards, but sufficient for positive identification and valuable for forensics because index fingers and thumbs are the most commonly identified crime scene fingerprints.  The US Visit Program has been migrating from two flat (not rolled) fingerprints to ten flat fingerprints since 2007.  "Fast capture" research funded by the US government will enable implementation of ten "rolled print equivalent" fingerprint recording (within 15 seconds per person fingerprinted) in future years.
Citations: http://onin.com/fp/fphistory.html