Alphonse Bertillon

Alphonse Bertillon , born with Paris the April 24th 1853 and died in Paris the February 13rd 1914, is a criminologist French. He founded in 1870 the first laboratory of Scientific police of criminal identification and invented the legal Anthropométrie called “Bertillon system” or “bertillonnage”, a system of identification quickly adopted in all Europe, then with the the United States, and used until 1970.

Biography

He is the son of the Statisticien Louis-Adolphe Bertillon and the younger brother of the statistician and Démographe Jacques Bertillon.

Initially simple employee charged to classify the files which the prefecture established on notorious criminals, then appointed chief of the photographic service of the Police headquarter of Paris, in 1882, it discovers that by taking fourteen measurements (size, feet, hand, nose, ears, etc) on any individual, there is only one chance out of two hundred quatre-vingt-six million so that one finds the same ones at another person. This system was used in France until in 1970. A specialized material is consequently used in all the penitentiary establishments: count, stool, Toise, Proportional compasses, shelf and Encre ur for catch of digital fingerprints.

Bertillon was one of the experts in Graphologie to intervene in the Affaire Dreyfus, during the expertise which was to decide if the writing of the famous form were that of the captain.

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