FINGERPRINTS

There is one thing that is yours alone, which no one else can have, and that is your fingerprint. You leave your fingerprints behind when you touch anything. The Chinese were the first people to know this. So they used a thumbprint instead of a signature on very important papers. A signature can be copied but a thumbprint can’t.

                In the late nineteenth century the real importance of fingerprints became known. A man called Sir Francis Galton began to study the lines on finger tips. He found that no to people had the same pattern of lines. He also learnt that t he lines do not changes as a person grows older.

                The police saw at once how fingerprints could help them. They began to keep records of the fingerprints of people who were known to be thieves.

                When the police want to find out whether a person has stolen anything before, they take his fingerprints and compare them with those they have. With so many prints on record, it would seem very hard to check but the police can usually find out in a few minutes.

                The prints on record are divided into different groups: those with lines that slope to the right, those that slope to the left, and those that have rings, and so on. Some have more lines than the others and some have lines that cut across others. Once the police know which group the prints belong to, all they have to do is to look up only that group and see whether the same fingerprint is already there. If it is, then its owner has stolen before!.   

           

***

GATHERED FROM MY OLD TEXT BOOK