The Fingerprint Factory

November 8, 2017 5:32 AM

During World War II the FBI expanded its fingerprint records dramatically. The records were kept on cards in index cabinets in an 80,000 square foot facility in the National Guard Armory in Washington D.C.

There are several posts on the Web aggregating photos of the facility, from the Life Magazine archives, and the National Archives; this seemed to be the best one.
And - 70 million fingerprints? - I assume that is about 7 million records? The population of the US in the 1943 was 137 million people.

posted by carter (19 comments total)

That has to be a lot bigger than 8,000 square feet, surely?

All those beautiful index-card cabinets... I'm getting a bit weak at the knees looking at these marvellous pictures!
posted by misteraitch at 5:50 AM on November 8, 2017

Top. Men.
posted by thelonius at 5:54 AM on November 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

And seventy years later, most of the people whose fingerprints were stored here are now dead, rendering all of this surveillance effort completely pointless. I'll bet the FBI feels awfully foolish now.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:55 AM on November 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

They've still got the abandoned army post in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
posted by demiurge at 6:11 AM on November 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

misteraitch, good catch! More like 80,000 square feet.
posted by carter at 6:14 AM on November 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

They've still got the abandoned army post in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

No doubt about it.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:15 AM on November 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

In the "Notorious Dead Criminals" filing cabinet, they weren't very consistent. They had "Legs" (rather than Jack) Diamond but Mrs. Kate Barker instead of "Ma" Barker. (That didn't stop them from shooting her dead, of course.) Arthur Fleigenheimer turns out to be Dutch Schultz. You could write an interesting post (or book) on just that picture and cabinet and the names and so on.
posted by pracowity at 6:17 AM on November 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Mod note: fixed "8,000" typo; thanks!
posted by taz (staff) at 6:32 AM on November 8, 2017

The Armory is still there - it's mostly used as a concert venue and space for public information expositions by the DC government these days.
posted by ryanshepard at 6:51 AM on November 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Location: Library of Congress
Music: Goldberg Variation No. 2, Johann Sebastian Bach

HOOVER: I helped organize it. You see every item is assigned its own index card with its own completely unique code indicating the title, author, location, and topic. What used to take days to locate now only takes a matter of minutes. Go on, give me an author or topic, anything.
GANDY: Indiscretion.
HOOVER: What else?
GANDY: Present day?
HOOVER: Good. Time me.

...Hoover produces and presents the item to his future life-long secretary...

GANDY: How do you know I didn't mean political indiscretion?
HOOVER: If you'd like, I can start all over again.
GANDY: That will do.

--J. Edgar(2011), Dustin Lance Black, directed by Clint Eastwood
posted by lazycomputerkids at 6:55 AM on November 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

And what used to take minutes to locate, now only takes a matter of seconds ...
posted by carter at 7:00 AM on November 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm totally calling "Notorious Dead Criminals" for my band name.
posted by Naberius at 7:54 AM on November 8, 2017

there's some little jerk in the FBI
keepin' papers on me six feet high
posted by stevil at 8:13 AM on November 8, 2017

there's some little jerk in the FBI
keepin' papers on me six feet high

Stevil-Here is a clarification. I haven't ever thought of Mr. J in these terms ever. Now there is room enough in my head.
posted by Oyéah at 10:06 AM on November 8, 2017

There's an awesome description of the use of this system to identify MLK's assassin, in Hellhound On His Trail.
posted by Coventry at 5:11 PM on November 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

ryanshepard: "The Armory is still there - it's mostly used as a concert venue and space for public information expositions by the DC government these days."

Mostly when I go by there (a couple of times a week) I see National Guard folks coming and going, but also the DC Rollergirls play there! It's pretty cool venue for it though I stopped going a few years ago as the lines for admittance in were getting too long for my patience.
posted by exogenous at 5:18 PM on November 8, 2017

It's almost adorable how they did this in the days before they could just get the TSA to do all the work on building that database.
posted by rokusan at 9:07 PM on November 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

My mother was one of the women trained to do that fingerprint classification. She was 17 when she moved to Washington, DC to work for the FBI. She & a high school friend were recruited by the federal government right after graduation to move to Washington, DC from their little Iowa town. She worked there for about 3 years.
posted by Nosey Mrs. Rat at 9:50 PM on November 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

"And friends, somewhere in Washington, enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. " -Arlo Guthrie.
So, I assume we can't edit the classic Miko post to redirect "somewhere in Washington" to the link in this post?
posted by Mutant Lobsters from Riverhead at 8:07 PM on November 11, 2017