Where Are Fingerprint Scans Used | Jarl Moe Nanofixit Titanium

September 13, 1902. Fingerprints are used as a proof of guilt in the United Kingdom for the first time.

For more than a century the method of fingerprint scanning has made the progress from looking through a magnifying glass to sophisticated computer processing. Today, it is indispensable in many areas. And here are several examples where fingerprints are used in practice today.

Criminalistics

Surely the most famous area of fingerprinting use is criminalistics. The research in this area began in the second half of XIX century. In 1891 the first classification of fingerprints was developed. As it was mentioned above, fingerprints were used as the evidence of guilt in the UK during the investigation of billiard balls stealing by Harry Jackson.

Keys 

This way of fingerprints use has become famous thanks to Hollywood movies where fingerprints were used to unlock safes. It uses sophisticated equipment AFIS - Automated fingerprint identification systems. Scanners used in these are systems can be optical, semiconductor and ultrasound The most reliable and effective are the last two types, but the optical ones certainly look spectacular on the screen when the light strip runs along the printout, so these scanners have become more popular and better known. And today they are used in more prosaic than the protection of bank vaults and secret laboratories areas. For example, biometric terminals are installed for time tracking of employees.

Signatures

People have been fascinated by the pictures on the fingertips since ancient times, and even hundreds of years ago they used it. For example, in the VI century in China a fingerprint was used instead of a signature or seal. However, we can not say for sure whether the uniqueness of such "print" was used to confirm the document authenticity. That "signature" had primarily a mystical character - it was important that the person touched the paper, left the trace of his personality.

Credit card

In 2007 Germany has started an interesting experiment: some banks have offered customers to associate their account not to a plastic card, but to their own fingerprints. A number of supermarkets and other retail outlets were equipped with special scanners. Some students began to pay this way for school lunches. Since the possibility of mistake is 1 to10 million, the owners of such "payment systems" may be less concerned about the safety of their money than the holders of usual cards.

Password

Fingerprints have become very popular among the developers of security systems. In particular finger scan can be used instead of a password or PIN-code in computers and gadgets. Ever since the 80's small biometric devices have been embedded in personal computers, and today they are often found in laptops or "flash cards". As a rule, the finger must touch a small chip where the light "reads" the skin surface. To be identified you don't need to scan the whole finger but only the unique part of it- the intersection of lines, special bends,etc.

Fingerprint sensor have also appeared in a recent smartphone from Apple - iPhone 5S. The development is called Touch ID and is designed to keep the info of the user. The chip will be integrated directly into the "Home" button.

This post is written by Jarl Moe, a tech writer from Nasty Creatures, a mobile app development company providing app design and epublishing services for enterprise and small businesses.