The History of Lightning Powder Company, Inc.

Lightning® brand fingerprint powder was developed by a crime scene officer in 1936. This officer, from Oakland, California Police Department, sorted through over 600 combinations of ingredients before settling on the formula which is still used today.

For four decades, he sold the powder mainly through the Institute of Applied Science (IAS) in Chicago. The IAS was a correspondence school offering basic training in fingerprint identification and related skills. They had pupils in scores of countries, and thereby, Lightning® brand powder was introduced in law enforcement agencies worldwide.

Michael and Beverly Carrick purchased the manufacturing equipment and the rights to the powder formula in 1976 and formed Lightning Powder Company, Inc., and continued to make the powder for the IAS. A couple of years later, the IAS was sold, and the new owner stopped buying fingerprint powder during this reorganization period. The Carrick's had to find a new market.

The Carrick's decided to devote their full-time efforts to marketing the powder directly to law enforcement agencies. They acquired more products and eventually had a line of equipment filling nearly 200 catalog pages.

In 1988, Michael and Beverly Carrick of Lightning Powder Company, Inc., purchased the Zephyr Brush Company from Mr. John Davis of the Oakland Police Department. They learned how to hand-roll the brushes to meet Mr. Davis' high standards of quality. To this day, employees of Lightning Powder Company still roll the brushes to Mr. Davis' exacting standards. We still use the same machines which Mr. Davis built, and we still hand-roll and hand-glue each Zephyr® brush. These hand-rolled brushes are sold in the United States and many foreign countries.

In 1990, Kathy Saviers came to work for Lightning Powder Company. After 18 years in law enforcement where she became a Certified Senior Crime Scene Analyst and a Certified Latent Print Examiner, she had the expertise to provide needed technical support to the customers through writing a better catalog and Minutiæ, the company newsletter, and through talking with the customers. She became the President and General Manager of the company in May of 1997. Kathy is a Distinguished Member of the International Association for Identification, has received the Good of the Association award for her work as the previous Secretary of the IAI Crime Scene Certification Board, where she still serves as a member of the Board, and is currently serving as the IAI Librarian.

In 2000, Lightning Powder Company was acquired by Armor Holdings, Inc., joining the Armor Forensics team of brand names that include NIK®, Identicator®, ODV™ and Evi-Paq™. Since then, Lightning Powder Company has expanded it's product line and is proud to provide the same excellent service and technical information that is has always provided.