Got Snow?

Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles

of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be 

seen and appreciated by others.  Every crystal was a masterpiece

of design and not one design was ever repeated.  When a snowflake

melted, that design was forever lost.  Just that much beauty was gone, 

without leaving any record behind. ~ Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley (1925)

Wilson Alwyn "Snowflake" Bentley
is one of the first known photographers of snowflakes.

He perfected a process of catching flakes on black velvet and blackboard in such a way that their images could be captured before they either melted or sublimated.

Bentley removing emulsion from a glass plate.

Bentley was first interested in snow crystals as a teenager on 

his family farm in Vermont.  He tried to draw what he saw through an old microscope given to him by his mother when he was 15.  

Since the flakes and crystals were so complex, Bentley couldn't record them properly before they melted.  He attached a bellows camera to a compound microscope.  After an extensive number of attempts, he finally photographed his first snowflake on January 15, 1885.  As a self-taught scientist and artist, whose singular obsession with the snowflake's infinite variety, his interests extended to how it was formed.

 During Bentley's lifetime, he captured more than 5,000 images of crystals.       

Wilson Bentley (1902)

 Bentley referred to snowflakes as "tiny miracles of beauty" 

and snow crystals as "ice flowers."

 Bentley published an article wherein he argued that 

no two snowflakes were alike.  This concept caught the attention of many

including The Smithsonian, National Geographic, Nature, Popular Science, and Scientific American.

Bentley Snowflake Micrograph (1890)

Wilson Bentley died of pneumonia at his farm in December 1931, after walking six miles in a blizzard.  Shortly before his death, his book, Snow Crystals, was published by McGraw/Hill and is still in print today.

" . . . Bentley was working with crude equipment . . .
But he did it so well that hardly anybody bothered to photograph snowflakes for almost 100 years."

~ Kenneth G. Libbrecht

Despite Bentley's fascinating work that led to significant contributions to science and photography, his name remains largely unknown to the public.  However, in Bentley's hometown of Jerico, Vermont, he is a household name.  A museum is dedicated to his life's work at an old mill that houses approximately 2,000 of his vintage images.  

Click HERE to visit the Wilson Bentley Museum

and his ability to capture "magic."

Snow in Canada

And to think you had your fill with snow this season . . . .

Sandra Boynton's Snowflake