India, Jan. 26 -- It was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that I found a 100-year-old story of a biometrics researcher who helped the French police deal with repeat offenders. In the 1890s, the French police had a sea of photographs of arrestees but no organised way to track the history of an offender. Alphonse Bertillon brought in a unique solution as a clerk in the police: organised datasets of human biometrics.

Bertillon transformed the body into a set of measurable data points, which when paired with standardised photographs and notes on distinguishing physical features could match individuals with previous arrests. (This was a time when cameras were expensive and only trained experts could use one). The Bertillonage, as...