1890 Wilson A. Bentley – Photomicrograph of Stellar Snowflake No. 10

Revealing the Infinite Variety of Nature’s Designs – Bentley’s Photomicrographs of Snowflakes.

Wilson A. Bentley's 1890 photomicrograph of Stellar Snowflake No. 10 captures the delicate beauty of a single snowflake's crystalline structure. Fascinated by snowflakes since childhood, Bentley dedicated his life to revealing their unique and intricate forms. Using a microscope paired with a bellows camera, he became the first person to successfully photograph individual snowflakes, documenting their ephemeral and symmetrical designs. His setup was a remarkable feat of ingenuity—he carefully coupled a compound microscope to a large-format camera with an extended bellows, allowing him to achieve magnifications of up to 60×. Light-tight connections ensured clarity, while his use of natural daylight illuminated the ice crystals with remarkable precision. Over the course of his lifetime, Bentley captured more than 5,000 snowflakes, each one a testament to nature's infinite variety. This remarkable image is part of that collection and exemplifies his groundbreaking work in the study of snowflakes, contributing to the widely accepted idea that no two snowflakes are alike.

Captured as an albumen print, this image was part of Bentley's larger effort to share his discoveries with the scientific community. In 1903, Bentley sent his prints to the Smithsonian Institution, where they garnered interest from scientists and were published in scientific journals. The photograph not only contributed to the field of meteorology but also became an iconic representation of nature's precision and beauty.

Bentley’s photographic process, involving a highly magnified view of the snowflake's structure, opened up new ways of studying natural phenomena. His work bridged art and science, demonstrating the aesthetic splendor of nature through the lens of scientific inquiry.

Credit: Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 31, Image No. SIA2013-09167
Author: Bentley, W. A (Wilson Alwyn)
Title: Photomicrograph of Stellar Snowflake No. 10
Date: 1890
Archive: Smithsonian
Source: Smithsonian Institution Archives
Physical Original: Albumen prints; 3.5 x 3

Available information: Wilson A. Bentley first became fascinated with snow during his childhood on a Vermont farm, and he experimented for years with ways to view individual snowflakes in order to study their crystalline structure. He eventually attached a camera to his microscope, and in 1885 he successfully photographed the flakes.

Wilson A. Bentley's pioneering snowflake photography was achieved through a meticulous integration of a bellows camera with a microscope, enabling him to capture large-format images of these delicate ice crystals. He photographed more than five thousand individual snowflakes and was published in numerous scientific articles and magazines. In 1903 Bentley sent prints of his snowflakes to the Smithsonian, hoping they might be of interest to Secretary Samuel P. Langley.

Image Credits: Smithsonian Institution Archives, Bentley, W. A (Wilson Alwyn), from left to right: SIA-SIA2008-1394, SIA-SIA2008-1395, SIA-SIA2013-09129, SIA-SIA2013-09131, SIA-SIA2013-09135, 1890