Did you know that, in far-away Argentina, Ivan Vučetić invented a method for identifying persons on the basis of their fingerprints, known as dactyloscopy? After serving in the navy, Vučetić immigrated to Argentina in 1884. He worked in the Central Police Office in La Plata, where he was in charge of organising the personal identification service.

By studying fingerprints, Vučetić developed his own classification system based on the grouping and recognition of papillary ridges. He founded the Identification Service in 1891, and, by taking fingerprints from convicts in La Plata, created the first police dactyloscopic collection in the world. The first murder case solved using this method involved the identification of the murderer on the basis of a bloody fingerprint.

The ten-finger identification system, known as the Argentinian or Vučetić system, was officially introduced in Argentina in 1902, and then in other countries in South America and the Far East. It was also used in California and some European countries.