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May 4, 2008

‘CSI’ to feature MSU’s fingerprint developer

Matthew Hill

Beckley will take a proverbial bite out of both the Big Apple and Hollywood later this month when a new fingerprint development system designed by a Mountain State University professor and his students is featured on an episode of “CSI New York.”

“I couldn’t have done this (by myself). I didn’t do this. The students really did the work,” said David Weaver, a Lookout resident and full-time forensics professor at MSU.

“I can come up with ideas and funding opportunities all day long. Putting it all together, I couldn’t possibly do myself. The students did thousands of chemical and temperature tests.”

Known as the Fuma-Dome, the device is billed on Weaver’s Web site as “a new and revolutionary system for developing latent prints by means of cyanoacrylate — or Super Glue — fumes.” Weaver filed for a patent on the invention almost three years ago.

Unique among fuming guns, the Fuma-Dome combines a fuming gun and fuming chamber into a single system designed specifically for use at a crime scene. It can also be used in a laboratory.

As Weaver explained it, the Fuma-Dome uses a heat source in what is known as a vapor wand to vaporize and emit a dye within the dome. The user places the device atop whatever is being tested so that the object is covered over by the dome. Fingerprints develop on everything contained therein.

“With this unit, fingerprints come up in 10 to 30 seconds and you’re not exposed to the fumes,” said Weaver, who emphasized the device is continually evolving. Its next incarnation should also feature light frequency and electronic components, he added.

The two integral units of the invention — the vapor wand and the dome — have their origins in the most unexpected concepts. Weaver thought of the dome as a means of containing the purportedly harmless, albeit annoying, fumes of the vapor wand.

His inspiration for the dome? A dog collar device used to prevent canines from seeing or chewing anything beneath their collar and beyond their field of frontal vision. The vapor wand itself conceptually transcends the Pacific Ocean.

“In the early 1980s, a factory in Japan was making Super Glue. They noticed that, around the work stations, fingerprints would appear. It was a manufacturing anomaly,” explained Dr. Michael Kane, director of MSU’s Justice Studies program.

“Why can’t we apply this to crime scenes? What Dave (Weaver) has done is introduce a glowing dye to Super Glue itself. The vapor wand came about in 1990 or 1991. I used it in graduate school and didn’t know who invented it. Now I work with him,” Kane quipped.

The dome has been compared to a “big salad bowl” that keeps the vapor wand’s fumes contained. The addition of a fluorescent dye to the fumes eliminates what had been a problem for crime scene investigators — accurate fingerprint acquisitions from white or very light-colored surfaces.

“There are a lot of forensics programs throughout the state and the country, but what (Weaver) has offered to students on an undergraduate level is unique,” Kane asserted.

“They get to participate as these things unfold. These are things you usually don’t see until graduate school. This gives our students an advantage — watching technology unfold before them. It introduces them to academic discipline. Their work is scrutinized. These kids get to watch their field develop before their very eyes.”

“CSI’s” producers caught wind of the invention at a presentation in Alabama last year, Weaver recalled. “We hit a home run,” he joked. A “CSI” representative contacted Weaver at his home less than a month ago to request permission to feature the item in an episode of the show set to air May 14.

Weaver said he intends to watch the episode “with trepidation. I have no control over how they depict the technology.”

— E-mail:

mhill@register-herald.com

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