Sunday, January 18, 2004

Finger prints

Finger printing. Who cleans up afterwards? A car turned up on the street outside our house at one point. I didn't take much notice of it; cars come and go. And there was nothing remarkable about it except it looked a little grubby. I was out in the front yard not long after and someone asked if it was mine, and did I want to sell it since it had been stolen. I puzzled over that for days. How did he know it had been stolen? I finally worked it out - the dark areas on the bonnet and above the doors were grubby because they hadn't been cleaned since the car was stolen, returned and dusted for prints. Why do they call it "dusting" for prints ... the stuff sticks like glue and doesn't dust off.
The whole concept of identifying people by their fingerprints is amazing. Did anyone laugh at the person who came up with the idea of taking impressions of people's fingers - because they were all unique. Did they know that eventually computer programs would be used to compare hundreds in the blink of an eye. The concept of a unique identifier was first applied to ears. These also leave a unique impression - quite apart from any other impression ears may otherwise make eg which sometimes cause people to be called "wingnut". They used to call ears "lugs", hence lugsholes, back in the 19th Century (which seems a very long time ago now).
But back to how difficult fingerprint powder residue is to remove. The supermarket doesn't sell a special product for this - although a commercial version could be available for those companies specialising in crime scene clean-up. That must be a gruesome undertaking.

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