1684: Fingerprint - The book of science

Fingerprint
Dactyloscopy
Loop, whorl, and arch
Commentary

Fingerprint

People had noticed patterns
on the fingertips.
Babylonians pressed fingers into clay
as signatures on legal documents.
Nehemias Grew put them under a microscope
and wrote in 1684 the first scientific description
of the patterns of ridges
on fingers and palms.

Dactyloscopy

Pudd’nhead Wilson and Sherlock Holmes
caught their perpetrators,
but Scottish police
falsely accused detective Shirley McKie
based on a fingerprint at the scene of the crime.
Patterns of friction ridges
on your fingertips, your palms,
and the soles of your feet,
no two alike, uniquely identify you
to the CIA, FBI, and your local police.

Loop, whorl, and arch

Loops, whorls, and arches
swirl like van Gogh’s Starry Night,
but the chaos has been classified
and reduced to a number
for easy filing.
This line of reasoning,
emphasizing efficiency and consistency,
dessicates reality to where
idiots can follow procedures
and artists despair.

Introduction of biometrics has proceeded slowly. Fingerprinting has been used for tracking criminals; it is not widely accepted that everyone should be fingerprinted. Token-based and knowledge-based identification systems have not raised the same privacy issues and fears of authoritarian control, although I have known people who did not want their children to be issued social security numbers.