A Brief History of Biometrics
Humans have used physical traits to identify each other for thousands of years. The implementation of face recognition and face authentication is nothing new. Traders in ancient Egypt used descriptions of physical appearance to know who was trusted and who was new to the market. In the Bible, Esau lost his birthright thanks to a ruse related to his hirsute arm. Even seemingly modern approaches like iris scanning first appeared in the writings of the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates. And speaking of Greece, the term “biometrics” is actually derived from the Greek words “bio” (life) and “metron” (measure).
One of the earliest contemporary forms of biometrics appeared in the late 1800s. Alphonse Bertillon, a French anthropologist and police clerk(!), put together a system for identifying criminals by measuring various body dimensions. The result was that bad guys could then be sorted by height, arm length, or other parameters. Unfortunately, many of the features that the Bertillon system measured were not unique to any one person, and his system was ultimately scrapped.
Next up in the evolution of biometric tools was fingerprinting. There is evidence that fingerprints were part of Babylonian business transactions as far back as 500 B.C. Marcello Malphighi, an Italian biologist, is credited with realizing their unique patterns back in 1665, but the idea of using them to identify criminals wasn’t widely adopted until around 1880 - when they replaced Bertillon’s method.
True biometric systems didn’t really emerge until the end of the twentieth century and have developed in parallel with increasingly powerful computer systems. All kinds of companies from device manufacturers to automotive innovators are using biometrics and face authentication technologies to make their products more user-friendly as well as to give them a futuristic edge over their competitors.
Today, biometrics are everywhere. Apple and Samsung have included fingerprint scanners on their smartphones since around 2013. MasterCard plans to use heartbeat data to verify purchases. Google’s new Abacus project will confirm identity by monitoring speech patterns, as well as how someone walks and types. Mercedes allows S-Class owners to start their expensive sedans using fingerprint recognition.
The list of potential applications for face authentication and face recognition-based security is huge. But history teaches us that with any innovative technology it takes time for standards and policies to be established before it truly goes mainstream. Equally important - the performance and user experience must live up to the hype. We are on the cusp of many exciting ways to use biometrics like face recognition, both for identification as well as for protecting privacy and providing security – but of course we’ve been saying that for quite a while.
At least a few thousand years...and counting.
(image: Leszek Leszczynski "Eye and finger" CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ )