Bertillon system

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Bertillon system

A system formerly used for identifying persons by means of a detailed record of body measurements, physical description, and photographs. The Bertillon system was superseded by the more accurate procedure of fingerprinting.

[After Alphonse Bertillon.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Bertillon system

(ˈbɜːtɪˌlɒn; French bɛrtijɔ̃)

(Historical Terms) a system formerly in use for identifying persons, esp criminals, by means of a detailed record of physical characteristics. Also called: bertillonage

[C19: named after Alphonse Bertillon (1853–1914), French criminal investigator]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Ber′til•lon sys`tem

(ˈbɜr tiˌyɔ̃)
n.

a system of identifying persons by a record of individual body measurements and peculiarities.

[1895–1900; after Alphonse Bertillon (1853–1914), French anthropologist]

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Noun

Bertillon system - a system or procedure for identifying persons

procedure, process - a particular course of action intended to achieve a result; "the procedure of obtaining a driver's license"; "it was a process of trial and error"

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His conversation, I remember, was about the Bertillon system of measurements, and he expressed his enthusiastic admiration of the French savant.

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One police chief would order him to shut down his dactyloscopy system and replace it with the Bertillon system (anything coming from Paris, which included Bertillon's measurement system, was greeted with open arms by many Argentinians), while the next chief would reverse the order.

The First Criminal Conviction Based on Fingerprint Evidence: Argentina, 1892

To put the soul of this pagan through a Bertillon system and set forth its marks of easy identification is, therefore, a sanitary measure demanded in the interest of public health.