Wilson Bentley’s model couldn’t wait long. A snow crystal lost its details by melting, long before a patient drawing was finished. On his Vermont farm, Bentley is looking for a way to preserve the image. He combined a camera with a microscope and succeeded in his first photographs in 1885.
Preparation requires working in the cold. Bentley delicately collects the crystals and places them under its device, especially with the help of a feather. The photographs reveal ramifications and shapes that the eye does not distinguish. It continues for decades, constituting a collection of more than five thousand images of crystals.
In 1931 he published with the physicist William Humphreys a work containing about two thousand three hundred photographs. This collection makes a spectacular diversity visible; it does not constitute an examination of all possible flakes. Bentley had mostly succeeded in a change of scale: something that disappeared under the fingers could remain available for observation and comparison.
What we know
An immense collection does not in itself demonstrate a universal rule.
To go to the source
References consulted on September 21, 2026. Linked pages may be in another language.
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