Mob FilesPublic-domain archive of American organized crime
A paper booklet titled How to Take Fingerprints, from the Department of Justice, United States Bureau of Investigation, lying on a wooden surface with a second small booklet titled How to Read Finger Prints, an ink pad, a brush, a ruler, small bottles, a boxed packet and a closed case.
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"How to Take Fingerprints," Bureau of Investigation booklet, 1932 (FBI artifact)

FBI photograph of the 1932 Government Printing Office booklet "How to Take Fingerprints," issued by the Bureau of Investigation for local peace officers. Hoover's foreword calls it "the fourth issue of this pamphlet."

Date
1932
Kind
photograph
Source
FBI, History: Artifacts
Retrieved
2026-10-12
Rights
The booklet was printed by the U.S. Government Printing Office for the U.S. Bureau of Investigation, a federal work in the public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The photograph is published by the FBI on fbi.gov with no third-party credit. The copy stored here is the FBI's web image converted to JPEG.

The FBI’s page quotes J. Edgar Hoover’s foreword to the booklet, which describes it as “the fourth issue of this pamphlet,” and refers to the Identification Division organized in 1924. The Bureau issued the booklet for local peace officers.

The photograph also shows objects that are not the Bureau booklet, among them a small Little Blue Book titled “How to Read Finger Prints” by C. Samuel Campbell and a boxed packet of transfer sheets; these are read from the photograph, and the FBI page does not describe them. The Bureau booklet’s cover carries a stamp of the Sheriff’s Office, Port Washington, Wisconsin.

A full-text copy of the booklet was not located. This page therefore rests on the FBI’s photograph of the cover and on the foreword the FBI quotes, and says nothing about the contents.

Object: Printed booklet, cover
Maker: U.S. Government Printing Office, for the U.S. Bureau of Investigation
Date: 1932
Provenance: held by the FBI
Appears in: FBI, History: Artifacts

itemFingerprint kit, 1930s (FBI artifact)FBI photograph of a leather fingerprint kit the Bureau dates to the 1930s, with a magnifier, brushes, vials of powder and chemicals, a probe, a pad of paper and a drop-down metal plate for spreading ink.