A History of Fingerprinting - IELTS Reading Answers

Nehasri Ravishenbagam

11 min read

Updated On Jan 28, 2026

Prepare effectively with A History of Fingerprinting IELTS Reading Answers. This blog includes solutions with location and explanation to sharpen comprehension, handle reading questions, and maximize your chances of scoring band 7+ in the reading module.

Passage for A History of Fingerprinting Reading Answers
Questions for A History of Fingerprinting Reading Answers
Answers for A History of Fingerprinting with Location and Explanations

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Maintaining focus during an extended reading test can be challenging, particularly for individuals who tend to lose concentration quickly. As a result, engaging in single-passage practice serves as an effective method for enhancing attention span in a structured manner. By directing full attention to one passage like ‘A History of Fingerprinting’, you develop the mental discipline essential for staying engaged during longer and more complex reading sessions.

To improve your performance in IELTS Academic Reading, solve the questions related to the passage ‘A History of Fingerprinting’. Check your answers against the provided locations and explanations given in this blog.

Passage for A History of Fingerprinting Reading Answers

You should utilize the passage ‘A History of Fingerprinting’ below to prepare for the IELTS reading exam. Read through the passage and be prepared to handle similar IELTS Reading topics for General and Academic.

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14, which are based on the reading passage below.

A History of Fingerprinting

A To detectives, the answers lie at the end of our fingers. Fingerprinting offers an accurate and infallible means of personal identification. The ability to identify a person from a mere fingerprint is a powerful tool in the fight against crime. It is the most commonly used forensic evidence, often outperforming other methods of identification. These days, older methods of ink fingerprinting, which could take weeks, have given way to newer, faster techniques like fingerprint laser scanning, but the principles stay the same. No matter which way you collect fingerprint evidence, every single person’s print is unique. So, what makes our fingerprints different from our neighbours’?

B A good place to start is to understand what fingerprints are and how they are created. A fingerprint is the arrangement of skin ridges and furrows on the tips of the fingers. This ridged skin develops fully during foetal development, as the skin cells grow in the mother’s womb. These ridges are arranged into patterns and remain the same throughout the course of a person’s life. Other visible human characteristics, like weight and height, change over time, whereas fingerprints do not. The reason why every fingerprint is unique is that when a baby’s genes combine with environmental influences, such as temperature, it affects the way the ridges on the skin grow. It makes the ridges develop at different rates, buckling and bending into patterns. As a result, no two people end up having the same fingerprints. Even identical twins possess dissimilar fingerprints.

C It is not easy to map the journey of how the unique quality of the fingerprint came to be discovered. The moment in history it happened is not entirely clear. However, the use of fingerprinting can be traced back to some ancient civilisations, such as Babylon and China, where thumbprints were pressed onto clay tablets to confirm business transactions. Whether people at this time actually realised the full extent of how fingerprints were important for identification purposes is another matter altogether. One cannot be sure if the act was seen as a means to confirm identity or a symbolic gesture to bind a contract, where giving your fingerprint was like giving your word.

D Despite this uncertainty, there are those who made a significant contribution towards the analysis of fingerprinting. History tells us that a 14th century Persian doctor made an early statement that no two fingerprints are alike. Later, in the 17th century, Italian physician Marcello Malpighi studied the distinguishing shapes of loops and spirals in fingerprints.

In his honour, the medical world later named a layer of skin after him. It was, however, an employee of the East India Company, William Herschel, who came to see the true potential of fingerprinting. He took fingerprints from the local people as a form of signature for contracts, in order to avoid fraud. His fascination with fingerprints propelled him to study them for the next twenty years. He developed the theory that fingerprints were unique to an individual and did not change at all over a lifetime. In 1880, Henry Faulds suggested that fingerprints could be used to identify convicted criminals. He wrote to Charles Darwin for advice, and the idea was referred on to Darwin’s cousin, Sir Francis Galton. Galton eventually published an in-depth study of fingerprint science in 1892.

E Although the fact that each person has a totally unique fingerprint pattern had been well documented and accepted for a long time, this knowledge was not exploited for criminal identification until the early 20th century. In the past, branding, tattooing, and maiming had been used to mark the criminal for what he was. In some countries, thieves would have their hands cut off. France branded criminals with the fleur-de-lis symbol. The Romans tattooed mercenary soldiers to stop them from becoming deserters.

F For many years, police agencies in the Western world were reluctant to use fingerprinting, much preferring the popular method of the time, the Bertillon System, where dimensions of certain body parts were recorded to identify a criminal. The turning point was in 1903 when a prisoner by the name of Will West was admitted into Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. Amazingly, Will had almost the same Bertillon measurements as another prisoner residing at the very same prison, whose name happened to be William West. It was only their fingerprints that could tell them apart. From that point on, fingerprinting became the standard for criminal identification.

G Fingerprinting was useful in identifying people with a history of crime and who were listed on a database. However, in situations where the perpetrator was not on the database, and a crime had no witnesses, the system fell short. Fingerprint chemistry is a new technology that can work alongside traditional fingerprinting to find more clues than ever before. From organic compounds left behind on a print, a scientist can tell if the person is a child, an adult, a mature perso,n or a smoker, and much more. It seems, after all these years, fingers continue to point the way.

Questions for A History of Fingerprinting Reading Answers

The passage, A History of Fingerprinting Reading Answers, consists of 14 questions, which showcase three different IELTS Reading question types. They are:

IELTS Reading Matching Headings (Q. 1-6)
IELTS Reading Sentence Completion (Q. 7-9)
IELTS Reading True/False/Not Given (Q. 10-14)

Questions 1-6

The Reading Passage has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-G from the list of headings below.

List of Headings

i Key people that made a difference

ii An alternative to fingerprinting

iii The significance of prints

iv How to identify a criminal

v Patterns in the making

vi Family connections

vii Exciting new developments

viii A strange coincidence

ix Punishing a criminal

x An uncertain past

Example	Answer
iii	Paragraph A

1 Paragraph B

2 Paragraph C

3 Paragraph D

4 Paragraph E

5 Paragraph F

6 Paragraph G

Questions 7-9

Complete the sentences.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

7 Unlike other ……… that you can see, fingerprints never change.

8 Although genetically the same, ……… do not share the same fingerprints.

9 A fingerprint was a substitute for a ……… in Indian contracts.

Questions 10-14

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage? Write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

10 Fingerprinting is the only effective method for identifying criminals.

11 The ridges and patterns that make up fingerprints develop before birth.

12 Malpighi conducted his studies in Italy.

13 Roman soldiers were tattooed to prevent them from committing violent crimes.

14 Fingerprint chemistry can identify if a fingerprint belongs to an elderly person.

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Answers for A History of Fingerprinting with Location and Explanations

It's time to double-check your responses to the IELTS reading passage on A History of Fingerprinting using the provided answer key. Don’t forget to create strategies based on the feedback from this practice, and master IELTS Reading question types with examples for a high reading band score.

1 Answer: v