How it works
Four rounds on the science and its history: the words of the lab, the people who built it, how fingerprints came into use, and how a print is read. No crime is described.
Read the full guide
Two rounds on fingerprints
Fingerprints through history runs from clay tablets and Babylon to the bureaus of 1892, 1897 and 1901. Reading a print asks about loops, whorls and arches, the three classification systems and what a print is made of.
The lab and the people
Words of the lab explains latent, patent and plastic prints, minutiae and trace evidence. Pioneers and firsts covers a Chinese handbook of 1248, the Bertillon System, a laboratory in two attic rooms and a blood test of 1901.
- For a science class, Reading a print pairs well with taking inked prints on white cards.
Questions and answers
What are some easy forensics trivia questions?
Loop and whorl are two basic fingerprint patterns; what is the third? Which police photograph is a lasting contribution of Alphonse Bertillon? Which everyday tool can make a hidden print visible? The answers are the arch, the mug shot and a bright flashlight.
Who first used fingerprints to identify people?
The practice is ancient: fingerprints signed contracts in Babylon in about 200 BCE. In modern times Sir William James Herschel began fingerprinting in India in 1858, and in 1892 Juan Vucetich, an Argentine police officer, created the first method of keeping fingerprints on file.
What does the word forensic mean?
It comes from a Latin word meaning of a forum, a place of assembly. In Roman times many trials and preliminary hearings were held in the forum.
How were the answers checked?
Each was read on October 3, 2026 in the English Wikipedia article Forensic science or Fingerprint, linked under the question. No crime is described and no victim is named: the questions are about methods, words, dates and the people who devised them.