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Wilson A. Bentley
Pioneering
Photographer
of Snowflakes
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Pioneering Photographer of Snowflakes
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 Wilson A. Bentley, 1925 Courtesy Jericho Historical Society |
Wilson A. Bentley (1865-1931), the "Snowflake Man," devoted his life to showing us the beauty and variety of snowflakes. A self-educated farmer from the small town of Jericho in northern Vermont, he pioneered "photomicrography," the photographing of very small objects, especially of snowflakes. Snowflakes or snow crystals were difficult to see because they melted so rapidly. Bentley lived in the "Snowbelt" region where the annual snowfall is about 120 inches, so he had many opportunities to study snowflakes.
From the time he was a small boy, Bentley loved the natural world around him. He loved to study butterflies, leaves, and spider webs. He kept a record of the weather conditions every day and was fascinated by raindrops. His mother gave him an old microscope to help him with his hobby, and he used it to look at raindrops and snowflakes and blades of grass. When he was fifteen years old, Bentley began to draw snowflakes, but they often melted before he could finish a drawing. When he was seventeen years old, his parents bought him a bellows camera that had a microscope inside that could magnify the tiny snowflake from 64 to 3,600 times its actual size.
Bentley spent long hours in the bitter New England cold mastering the art of snowflake photography. After many failures, he photographed his first snow crystal in 1885, using a small lens opening that let in just a little bit of light but leaving the lens open for up to a minute and a half. He devoted the rest of his life to exploring these fascinating forms and photographed more than 5,000 snow crystals until his death in 1931. After a very big snowstorm on Valentine's Day in 1928, he made over a hundred photographs. He expected to find that most snowflakes look alike, but was amazed to find that every snowflake he photographed was different.In 1903, he donated a collection of 500 of his snowflake photographs to the Smithsonian Institution to ensure their safety. He wrote that he was "deeply grateful for your kindly help in thus placing my collection of snow photographs beyond all possibility of loss and destruction, through fire or accident." When he was 66 years old, he published his book, Snow Crystals, to show the world his life's work.
Documents On-Line
- Letter dated December 15, 1904 from Wilson A. Bentley to Smithsonian Secretary
Samuel P. Langley
- Letter dated December 26, 1904 from Wilson A. Bentley to Smithsonian Secretary
Samuel P. Langley
- Photographs of Snowflake Studies from Wilson A. Bentley
to the Smithsonian Institution
Other Resources
- Bentley, Wilson A. and William J. Humphreys, Snow Crystals. New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1931.
- Bentley, Wilson A. Bentley. Studies among the snow crystals
during the winter of 1901-2 with additional data collected during previous
winters and twenty-two half-tone plates. Reprinted from the Annual Summary
of the Monthly Weather Review for 1902. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing
Office, 1903.
- Martin, Jacqueline Briggs. Snowflake Bentley. Boston, Massachusetts:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998.
- Prior, Douglas. Wilson A. Bentley, 1865-1931: Photographer of Snow Crystals. Tempe, Arizona: School of Art, Arizona State University, 1984.