A Brief history of Handwriting Analysis

Handwriting analysis is an important tool for the keen forensic scientist and needs this skill to identify crooks in special cases. The roots of handwriting analysis are unclear but one of the first men to historically recognize different people had unique handwriting was Camillo Baldi. He lived in the late 16th century to the early 17th century was a professor at the University of Bologna. He is considered one of the earliest pioneers of graphology.

During the early 20th century, handwriting analysis became an important part in discovering one's true identity in specific criminal cases. One such famous case was the Baby Lindbergh kidnapping which occurred on March 1, 1932. This case was solved when the handwriting on the ransom note for Baby Lindbergh stuck the observer as almost exactly the same as Bruno Hauptmann. For this reason, Hauptmann was convicted and was sentenced to death via the electric chair. This form of forensic science is not the most accurate evidence in a trial for it requires more human involvement than other forensic sciences such as fingerprint analysis.