The humble gravesite of John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972), generally known as J. Edgar Hoover, at the historic Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC. J. Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972. Hoover is credited with building the FBI into a large and efficient crime-fighting agency, and with instituting a number of modern innovations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories.