Biometrics: 1960s

In 1960, Woodrow W. Bledsoe developed the first semi-automatic face recognition system. It may come as no surprise that this was via contract with the U.S. Government. His system required that the administrator locate features on a photograph (eyes, ears, nose, mouth). It then calculated ratios between these points that could be used to compare to available reference data.
Also in 1960, a Swedish professor named Gunnar Fant created a model that explained the physiological components of acoustic speech based on the x-rays of people making phonic sounds. This model gave us a better understanding of the biological components of speech and became an integral part of speaker recognition.
1965 introduced the first automated signature recognition system based on research by North American Aviation.
In 1969, the FBI began searching for a system that could automate its fingerprint identification process. The existing manual process required an inefficient number of man-hours. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was contracted for this quest. They earmarked two crucial challenges to its solution:
- Ability to scan fingerprint cards and identify minutiae
- Then to compare a scanned fingerprint to lists of minutiae