In my quest to find out about the owners of copies of the novels Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, I have bought a copy of each secondhand, from Amazon. I really want a dog eared number but of course most buyers want them in good condition so we will see what comes. When I get them I hope to scour them for evidence of their previous owners in particular, with fingerprint detection. I have just been searching the internet for the right material to detect what they call 'latent fingerprints'. Apparently on porous surfaces such as paper you need a chemical spray called Ninhydrin. In my quest for this information I got talking to a really helpful man called Hugh who works at a company called Foster Freeman who manufacture machines for detecting finger prints. He has given me the name of a consultant they use who is a top expert in the fingerprinting field. I am so excited. He was vaguely bemused by my project as most people phoning are from companies or organisations such as the police. It's amazing to hear about all of these complex worlds out there that you know nothing about.
Anyway, I have ordered some of this spray from a company in the US at some expense but can't wait to receive it and start forensically documenting these books.
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