This chapter introduces the reader to facial recognition technology (FRT) history and the development of FRT from the perspective of science and technologies studies. Beginning with the traditionally accepted origins of FRT in 1964–1965, developed by Woody Bledsoe, Charles Bisson, and Helen Wolf Chan in the United States, Simon Taylor discusses how FRT builds on earlier applications in mug shot profiling, imaging, biometrics, and statistical categorisation. Grounded in the history of science and technology, the chapter demonstrates how critical aspects of FRT infrastructure are aided by scientific and cultural innovations from different times of locations: that is, mugshots in eighteenth-century France; mathematical analysis of caste in nineteenth-century British India; innovations by Chinese closed-circuit television companies and computer vision start-ups conducting bio-security experiments on farm animals. This helps to understand FRT development beyond the United States-centred narrative. The aim is to deconstruct historical data, mathematical, and digital materials that act as ‘back-stage elements’ to FRT and are not so easily located in infrastructure yet continue to shape uses today. Taylor’s analysis lays a foundation for the kinds of frameworks that can better help regulate and govern FRT as a means for power over populations in the following chapters.