A historical review of fingerprint identification work at New Scotland Yard highlights the agency's strong tradition of successfully cold searching burglaries and robberies and scenes of the crime prints. Fingerprint officers have seen computers as a personal threat to their skills. Early computerization failed to recognize this attitude, but now fingerprint staff are involved in developing and testing the AFR. Although some resistance to the system still exists, the AFR has not only increased efficiency and effectiveness, but has also laid firm foundations for improvement in print identification. Graphs and photographs.