By Judi McLeod ——Bio and Archives--November 28, 2010
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Down through the ages, children have held their tongues out to try to catch falling snowflakes. It is not only children who look forward to the first snow each year. Many adults join children in dreaming of a White Christmas.
Now that the snow is beginning to fly in northern regions, the story of Wilson A. Bentley is a good way to teach young children about God’s Creations and the great heights to American ingenuity has taken the world.
One of the most entrancing stories of all time starts with the lifelong passion of an ordinary farm boy in a small rural village.
Home schooled by his school teacher mother, Bentley, fascinated by atmospheric science was to go on to attract world attention from the small rural town of Jericho, Vermont.
Known to this day as “Snowflake Man”, this unassuming farmer was celebrated for his pioneering work in the area of photomicrophography, most notable for his extensive work with snow crystals (snowflakes).
“By adapting a microscope to a bellows camera, and after years of trial and error, he became the first person to photograph a single snow crystal in 1885.” (Snowflakebentley.com).
The full story of Bentley’s fascination with snow (full story available at the above website) will enchant children of all ages.
And the story of how he came to share the miracle of the “no two are alike” snowflake with the world is a tale that teaches so many of life’s lessons, including never giving up and so much more.
Bentley’s story begins with a Mother’s Love. Knowing how fascinated her son was with snowflakes and the weather in general, Bentley’s mother bought him a microscope for his 15th birthday. Looking at snow crystals through his microscope, Bentley was even more intrigued by their close-up beauty and intricacy.
He wanted to photograph the snow crystals, a difficulty times two. Snowflakes melt in an instant. Cameras were beyond the reach of a struggling farmer back in the 19th century. Against the purchase of such an expensive “toy”, Bentley’s father was talked into the gift by Bentley’s mother, and when Bentley turned 17, he was given both a camera and a new microscope.
There were no overnight miracles to soothe his father’s anxieties. Indeed it was to take took two long years of painstaking trial and error for young Bentley to achieve his goal. Then on Jan. 15, 1885, at only 19 years of age, he made the world’s first photomicrograph of a snow crystal.
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The true story of the “Snowflake Man” is also one of continuing to follow a dream against all odds, even though the villagers considered your passion for snow photography as eccentric or odd.
The village “eccentric” devoted his lifetime to the study of snow.
In 1898, at the age of 33, he began to publish articles of his findings and images. He published 49 popular and 11 technical articles about snow crystals, frost, dew and raindrops, including the entry on “snow” in the 14th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica!
Bentley’s is a story that both fires the imagination and awakens the soul.
In the end he captured some 5,000 snowflakes in Snow Crystals, a book of his snow crystal images, published in 1931 and still in demand to the present day.
Snowflakes trump even the beauty of Tiffany and Faberge jewels. Theirs are only man made while the crystals that fall from the sky come from the Creator.
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