by John Goldwood

As we head into the winter months, we’re filled with anticipation of our first snowfall of the season here in the Puget Sound low country. Will we have a White Christmas, or will we need to wait for the colder months beyond?

For one young man living on a Vermont farm in the late 1800s, his initial interaction with snowflakes led to a lifelong passion and worldwide recognition as ‘The Snowflake Man of Jericho.’ Wilson Alwyn Bentley, born in 1865, was fifteen years old when his mother provided an inexpensive microscope for him to view snowflakes. The incredibly delicate crystals seen through the microscope sparked his lifelong interest. At nineteen, he acquired a compound microscope and a large studio camera and became the first person to photograph a single snowflake on January 15, 1885. For the next fifty years, the first snowfall would find Bentley setting up his equipment in an unheated shed at the farm to capture on glass plates the magnified images of snowflakes. He eventually photographed nearly 6000 individual snowflakes. His images have been published in college textbooks and the Encyclopedia Britannica and used as inspiration by artists and jewelers. His snowflake photo plates are found in many museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Smithsonian.

When the next snowfall arrives, I hope you will be inspired to rush out with your magnifying glass and enjoy those beautiful snow crystals!