Question: I was reading the [Wikipedia on passports](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport), and there were numerous important dates in passport history, but I didn't find any date when passports became widely used documents for travelling. 

I see passports from late 19th century, and general passports were regulated by League of Nations in 1920s. Based on this my guess is that in 1920 the passports were used by almost all countries of the world.

My question is: **(approximately) when passports and border checks became widespread and commonly used procedures?**

UPDATE: adding more precision: when became passports (or its predecessor) as a travel document standard way to check travellers around the world?

Answer: 
According to [The Guardian](http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2006/nov/17/travelnews), "passports were not generally required for international travel until the first world war". [Wikipedia concurs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Conference_on_Passports_%26_Customs_Formalities_and_Through_Tickets)

This matches accounts I have read of people travelling from London to Moscow without travel documents. During the First World war, they became necessary, and they never stopped being needed.
Forever? Every civilization makes it a priority to know who is who and keep out the unwanted people. In the Book of Judges an incident is described from 3000 years ago whereby a [shibboleth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth) is used to identify aliens. According to the Wikipedia entry on [identity documents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_document), the [passports](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_Conducts_Act_1414) of [King Henry V](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_V_of_England) (15th century) were the first such documents, but various personal documentation devices certainly date back to the Romans, if not earlier. Diplomats, of course, have always carried passports since ancient Egyptian times. The word "diplomat", by the way, comes from the Roman word *diploma*, which was a sort of a passport, or at least was used that way.

Note that there has already been a History channel post on [Roman identity documents](https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/9017/how-did-the-roman-state-verify-citizenship) which may be relevant ("How did the Roman state verify citizenship?").

In terms of the first country to be "checking papers" on every Tom, Dick and Harry in the modern sense, I would probably give that honor to Frederick the Great. He was a real bureaucrat and was known for appointing "Passport Meisters" who required passports even of the most ordinary people to get across borders. He definitely bumped up the usage of passports on a massive scale and set the tone for the later Prussian obsession with elaborately documenting each and every individual.