With the evolution of communication and technical progress some parallels can be established between the evolution of entertainment and a progress in terms of scientific discovery, all of this lying in the forensic and criminal context.
To pursue the development of the last section on hydrogen peroxide, its advantages and its drawbacks, we will talk about the evolution of this process, or more precisely its successor: the luminol.
Hydrogen peroxide is, as we explained it, the first mean of blood detection. It was effective in certain measures only and showed dysfunction like many false positives. Researches has been done and led to the creation of luminol, a chemical process which is the most widely used today forensic sciences, that is to say, the research of evidences on a crime scene.
If this product is currently used, it has been discovered for about 200 years. Such an old discovery that many version of the luminol's story are merging. Everyone agrees with the fact that the creation of this product dates back to the late nineteenth century, but no uses were made back then. After this discovery theories are diverging. A large majority of person explains that it is the chemist H. Albrecht who discovered the reaction of luminol in presence of hydrogen peroxide, and which results in the production of a blue light and that by using a catalyst you could speed up the reaction. All of this has been found out by "accidentally" mixing those products. Still, other sources claim that it was in 1913 that the light generation which is called chemiluminescence of luminol was first noticed by Semper and Cuirtis and that they had mixed luminol with sodium hydroxide then with hydrogen peroxide. In 1936 several scientific including K. Gleu and K. Pfannstiel discovered that the catalyst, in other terms, the chemical species which accelerates the reaction between luminol and other chemical species, is contained in the heme component of hemoglobin because it contains an iron atom, the iron being the "real" catalyst. A year later W. Specht conducted wide and extensive studies on the reaction of luminol, and for the first time applied it to the blood detection on the crime scenes. He did several tests on different materials stained with blood. He and McGrath (1942) tested the mixture of luminol and hydrogen peroxide with various bodily fluids such as saliva, sweat, urine, etc... A few years later, Moody and Proesher kept on studying the structure and chemical properties of luminol reactions and tested preparations on both human and animal blood, already pointing out some false positives. Then, two of the most commonly used preparations are invented. The first one is from Grodsky in 1951, which includes as powder: luminol, sodium carbonate, sodium perborate, all dissolved in distilled water. This kit is quickly becoming the most used on crime scenes. Then appears a new composition combining luminol, sodium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide, hydrogen peroxide and distilled water. This one is created by Weber. Grodsky's preparation was the major one, but it soon began to present some flaws such as a really long time to start shining, or the toxicity of sodium perborate. Weber's preparation becomes increasingly used, since it also has advantages like the fact that it can be photographed in the complete darkness.
