Harold Green; Inventor of Fingerprint Device

Harold Green, 74, inventor of the Comparator device for fingerprint identification. He earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the College of the City of New York and a master’s from Columbia University. In addition to the identification machine, Green also patented an easily removable canvas covering for battlefield stretchers and snap-on nylon webbing for repairing lawn furniture. In the 1960s, Green managed Molectronics, which worked on the X-15 rocket, and in the early 1970s he was president of Green Industries Corp., which made leisure furniture. After inventing the fingerprint comparison device, he set up Comparator Systems Corp. in 1976 and was president and chairman until 1981, when he retired because of poor health. Unlike massive computers used to match suspects’ fingerprints with known offenders, the Comparator is used by jails and prisons to verify identification of prisoners due for release. In recent years, Green developed a combination of video and the Internet to create personal biographies for extended families. On Saturday in Los Angeles of cardiac arrest.