Snowflake Bentley and the Photography of Snowflakes
Wilson Alwyn “SNOWFLAKE” BENTLEY, born in 1865, lived in Jericho, Vermont nearly all his life, and was a meteorologist and a self-taught expert on the subject of photographing snowflakes.
Bentley was raised on a farm among family, friends and neighbors who dreaded the long New England winters, getting out to the barn to do chores in heavy snow.
But Snowflake Bentley loved the winter, especially the snow.
When he was 15 years old, his mother gave him a microscope, and he was fascinated by what looking through the microscope revealed about the natural world. With joy and increasing expertise, he photographed fog and clouds and raindrops.
In 1885, at 20, he took the first known photograph of a snowflake. He learned how to catch snowflakes on black velvet and snap a photograph before they melted.
In his lifetime, he made over 5,000 images of snow crystals. He called them “ice flowers.”
Snowflake Bentley made famous the saying “No two snowflakes are alike” and he could prove it to you with his “photomicrographs” — photos taken through a microscope. Snowflake Bentley gave his snowflake photomicrographs to a museum of science in Buffalo, New York.
The Jericho Historical Society also has a large collection of Bentley’s photomicrographs, and his home in town has been preserved.
Most people around Jericho thought it was wonderful what Snowflake Bentley was doing, and whenever his photomicrographs were displayed locally, they were a hit with the public.
But there were always Vermonters who knew Snowflake Bentley, or had observed him at work, and thought the man was a damn fool for standing around in the cold of winter, getting so excited about little bits of snow. Many of these moralists predicted that Snowflake Bentley would die young of pneumonia.
In 1931, Snowflake Bentley died young of pneumonia.