Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy D. Wilson. And Tracy.
Speaker 1: I bet you were taught as a kid in science class,
Speaker 1: probably pretty early on. That's all. Snowflakes are unique and
Speaker 1: there are no two exactly the same. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: it was so early that science was not a separate class, right,
Speaker 1: It was science together like kindergarten. And then we would
Speaker 1: like fold the paper into little shapes and cut it
Speaker 1: out and then unfolded and it would be our own
Speaker 1: unique snowflake. There you go. Uh. Today, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about the origin of that by sharing the story
Speaker 1: of Wilson Bentley, who was a farmer meteorologist who became
Speaker 1: known to many during his lifetime as the snowflake Man.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you picked this because I fund it interesting
Speaker 1: and and I got to look at pictures of snowflakes.
Speaker 1: So Bentley was born Wilson Alwyn Bentley on February nine,
Speaker 1: eight sixty five, and Jericho, Vermont. Living in the farmhouse
Speaker 1: where the Bentley's lived. There were Wilson and his brother Charles.
Speaker 1: Their parents, Edwyn and Fanny Bentley, and their grandparents on
Speaker 1: Edwin's side, Shelley and Abigail Bentley. Shelley and Abigail had
Speaker 1: owned the property and then they had turned it over
Speaker 1: to Edwyn when he was ready to start a family,
Speaker 1: on the condition that he kept housing and caring for
Speaker 1: his parents. So, while Wilson was still a boy, his
Speaker 1: grandparents moved to another house down the road, and two
Speaker 1: have Edwin's relatives, Mary and Melissa Blood, moved in. Wilson's
Speaker 1: brother Charles, married Mary Blood when she was still just
Speaker 1: a child of twelve herself. Yeah, we should also point
Speaker 1: out that there is there are question marks about Mary
Speaker 1: and Melissa and their relationship to the family because they're
Speaker 1: often kind of casually referred to as cousins or distant relatives.
Speaker 1: But it also seems like they may have been just
Speaker 1: kind of like close friends of the family who had
Speaker 1: fallen on hard times and needed a place to live,
Speaker 1: and so they kind of got adopted into the family
Speaker 1: unofficially um and got called cousins, but they were not.
Speaker 1: They may not have been blood relatives at all. But
Speaker 1: the area where the Bentley's lived was on the east
Speaker 1: side of Jericho. It was close to Bolton Mountain and
Speaker 1: it was serviced by a one room schoolhouse. But Wilson
Speaker 1: Bentley did not go to school as a child, do
Speaker 1: in some part to it just being difficult to actually
Speaker 1: get to the school building for a lot of the
Speaker 1: time during the year because of inclement weather where they lived,
Speaker 1: but that does not mean he went without an education
Speaker 1: thanks to his mother, who was an educator. According to
Speaker 1: Bentley's own account, quote, I never went to school until
Speaker 1: I was fourteen years old. My mother taught me at home.
Speaker 1: She had been a school teacher before she married my father,
Speaker 1: and she instilled in me her love of knowledge and
Speaker 1: of the finer things of life. She had books, including
Speaker 1: a set of encyclopedia. I read them all. He also
Speaker 1: learned to play piano, clarinet, coronet, and violin from his mother,
Speaker 1: and he played music his whole life and really loved it.
Speaker 1: Bentley's mother is also the person who gave Wilson his
Speaker 1: first microscope, essentially setting the stage for his life's work.
Speaker 1: That microscope was old. It was one that had been
Speaker 1: part of her science lessons when she was still teaching,
Speaker 1: and she gave it to her son, who was ever
Speaker 1: more curious about nature, and like a lot of kids
Speaker 1: who get to play with microscopes, he just started putting
Speaker 1: everything he could find under its lens, from flower pedals
Speaker 1: to feathers to water. But even at that early age
Speaker 1: fifteen by Bentley's recollection, what he really wanted to look
Speaker 1: at was snowflakes. He would later write quote, when other
Speaker 1: boys of my age were playing with pop guns and slingshots,
Speaker 1: I was orbed in studying things under the microscope. Drops
Speaker 1: of water, tiny fragments of stone, a feather dropped from
Speaker 1: a bird's wing, a delicately veined petal of some flower.
Speaker 1: But always from the beginning, it was the snowflakes that
Speaker 1: fascinated me. Most the farm folks up in this north
Speaker 1: country dread the winter, but I was supremely happy from
Speaker 1: the day of the first snowfall, which usually came in November,
Speaker 1: until the last one, which sometimes came as late as May.
Speaker 1: As a team, he started taking the microscope to the
Speaker 1: outermost room of the family farmhouse, which stayed very cold,
Speaker 1: so he could look at ice crystals there. So we're
Speaker 1: going to do a quick word here on the term
Speaker 1: snowflake versus snow crystal or ice crystal. They all often
Speaker 1: get used interchangeably, but the six sided shapes that we
Speaker 1: all kind of vernacularly called snowflakes are really snow crystals,
Speaker 1: and many snow crystals can make up a snowflake. They
Speaker 1: clump together as they fall and then some times break
Speaker 1: back apart. But snowflake can also still be used to
Speaker 1: describe a single snow or ice crystal, and this is
Speaker 1: something Bentley came to realize as he studied frozen precipitation
Speaker 1: and snow crystals, of course, to be clear, are not
Speaker 1: frozen rain, that is sleet. They are snow crystals formed
Speaker 1: when water vapor becomes ice without passing through a liquid
Speaker 1: water stage. Wilson observed all of this, but he didn't
Speaker 1: just observe. He took detailed notes, and he drew snow crystals.
Speaker 1: He knew that he was probably getting the details wrong, though,
Speaker 1: and that frustrated him. Ice crystals being what they are,
Speaker 1: they also melted before he could look at them again
Speaker 1: and revise his sketches to make them more accurate. He
Speaker 1: would try to hold his breath during his observations and
Speaker 1: his sketching so that he wouldn't melt the things he
Speaker 1: was trying to draw sometimes though he would exhale and
Speaker 1: have to end that whole study accidentally. I can't imatione
Speaker 1: one the tenacity that this requires him to the frustration
Speaker 1: in those moments when you just let your breath go
Speaker 1: because you can't hold your breath forever. Yeah, And then
Speaker 1: you know, anytime I need to not breathe for some reason,
Speaker 1: that's when I want to breathe so bad. For sure.
Speaker 1: It becomes like a panic inducer for me. Um Wilson's
Speaker 1: father was never especially enthused about his son's scientific pursuits.
Speaker 1: He was a farmer, and he expected that Wilson would
Speaker 1: follow suit. Even so, when Wilson learned about the possibility
Speaker 1: of a camera that might be able to take photographs
Speaker 1: through a microscope, he and his mother made the case
Speaker 1: to Edwin Bentley that they needed one, and he ultimately
Speaker 1: acquiesced to that request. And this was to be clear
Speaker 1: a big investment. According to Wilson Bentley's later in life
Speaker 1: writing quote, when I was seventeen years old, my mother
Speaker 1: persuaded my father to buy for me the camera and microscope,
Speaker 1: which I have developed into the apparatus I am still using.
Speaker 1: It cost even then one hundred dollars. You can imagine
Speaker 1: how my father hated to spend all that money on
Speaker 1: what seemed to him a boy's ridiculous whim. Something to
Speaker 1: note here is that while the elder Bentley okayed the
Speaker 1: acquisition of this equipment, Wilson was in no way absolved
Speaker 1: of any of his duties on the farm. He could
Speaker 1: pursue his snowflake studies, but he could not shark any
Speaker 1: other parts of his work, and this held true for
Speaker 1: the whole time he was doing this research and doing
Speaker 1: experiments with photography. But Wilson Mentley was still a teenager
Speaker 1: at this point. He had never taken a photograph in
Speaker 1: his life when he had this new camera, and his
Speaker 1: work with the microscope was largely self directed, with some
Speaker 1: pointers from his mother. If you have ever gotten really,
Speaker 1: really excited about a new technology or a hobby and
Speaker 1: bought a bunch of expensive equipment, only to realize you
Speaker 1: have no idea you what to do with it, you
Speaker 1: are kind of where Wilson Bentley was in the early
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties. I'm just gonna say I don't know what
Speaker 1: that's like at all. I was just thinking about how
Speaker 1: I have a little point and shoot camera that has
Speaker 1: all kinds of settings that I like. I thought I
Speaker 1: was going to learn how to use them all, and
Speaker 1: I've learned none of them. I just used the automatic one,
Speaker 1: which at this point is effectively the same as my phone.
Speaker 1: See this made me think of when I got my
Speaker 1: embroidery machine and then was like, I need a bunch
Speaker 1: of software to do custom designs. And then I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: now what Slowly you figure it out. Although he may
Speaker 1: have been initially overwhelmed and probably disheartened by a lot
Speaker 1: of disappointments early on, he kept at it. He worked
Speaker 1: through trial and error to figure out how the camera
Speaker 1: worked and how he could actually take photos of microscopic things.
Speaker 1: Because he approached it this way, though, he started to
Speaker 1: understand the camera and his microscope and the behavior of
Speaker 1: the ice crystals with incredible depth of expertise. He figured
Speaker 1: out a way that he could collect the snow crystals
Speaker 1: on a black board outside and then move inside carefully
Speaker 1: with the ones he had collected, and then he used
Speaker 1: a chicken feather, something that was very abundant on the farm,
Speaker 1: to very carefully move the snow crystal that he wanted
Speaker 1: to look at onto a plate and under the microscope.
Speaker 1: One of the problems was simply a matter of size,
Speaker 1: not of the snowflakes, but of the camera. The camera
Speaker 1: that Bentley had purchased was a Bellows camera. That's one
Speaker 1: of the ones that has like an accordion between the
Speaker 1: length part and the back part if you're having trouble
Speaker 1: visualizing it. He had to position the microscope at one
Speaker 1: end and then step around to the other side of
Speaker 1: it to see through the viewfinder. But if he was
Speaker 1: looking through the camera and needed to focus the microscope,
Speaker 1: he could not do both of that at the same time.
Speaker 1: The length of the Bellows was longer than the distance
Speaker 1: of his arm that he could reach. So to solve
Speaker 1: that problem, Bentley came up with a way to attach
Speaker 1: the fine focused mechanism of the microscope to a wheel
Speaker 1: and pulley that he could manipulate from the other end
Speaker 1: of the camera while still seeing the image. It's pretty ingenious.
Speaker 1: His first successful photo micrograph was made on January five
Speaker 1: during a snowstorm. Bentley, who was just shy of his
Speaker 1: twentieth birthday, was elated, and he later wrote of that
Speaker 1: moment quote the day that I developed the first negative
Speaker 1: made by this method and found it good. I felt
Speaker 1: almost like falling on my knees beside that apparatus and
Speaker 1: worshiping in it was the greatest moment of my life.
Speaker 1: The first picture of a snowflake had been made. It
Speaker 1: had taken Bentley four years to figure out exactly how
Speaker 1: to do it, so most people would probably want to
Speaker 1: scream about that kind of achievement from the rooftops. But
Speaker 1: Bentley was not like most people we'll talk about when
Speaker 1: he decided to share his photo micrograph work after a
Speaker 1: quick word from a sponsor. So, as we mentioned before
Speaker 1: the break, Wilson Bentley had taken the first photograph of
Speaker 1: a snowflake, but he did not immediately share his work,
Speaker 1: not even close. It was another thirteen years before anyone
Speaker 1: even heard about it. But during those thirteen years he
Speaker 1: was incredibly busy. He worked during that time to capture
Speaker 1: more images, more than four hundred, but he also started
Speaker 1: composing a data record of not just the ice crystals
Speaker 1: he had observed, but also meteorological data like storm severity
Speaker 1: and timing, trying to see if there was a pattern
Speaker 1: that would link the characteristics of the ice crystals he
Speaker 1: observed with the nature of the storm that had delivered them,
Speaker 1: and he was really doing this, it seemed just out
Speaker 1: of sheer curiosity and enthusiasm for it. He didn't think
Speaker 1: he was doing anything that was especially groundbreaking, and kind
Speaker 1: of presumed that anything he found had already been studied
Speaker 1: by scientists and scholars, and he certainly wasn't making any
Speaker 1: money at it. He just loved it. This level of
Speaker 1: devotion to something with no bigger plans for the pursuit
Speaker 1: may seem odd. It certainly did to people who knew Wilson.
Speaker 1: He was generally considered odd or eccentric by pretty much everyone.
Speaker 1: One story told by a fellow villager was that as
Speaker 1: a prank, a bunch of boys switched the wheels on
Speaker 1: Bentley's buggy so that the front wheels were the big
Speaker 1: ones and the back ones were small, instead of the
Speaker 1: normal way, which was the other way around. They were
Speaker 1: even more amazed when Bentley showed no reaction to this
Speaker 1: and just drove a buggy home and never mentioned it. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's not clear whether he didn't notice or just ignored it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just an illustration of how he was a little bit different.
Speaker 1: But though people found him strange, he was also generally
Speaker 1: well liked because he was a very kind, quiet young man, easygoing, witty,
Speaker 1: and friendly, despite the fact that he was also a
Speaker 1: bit of an introvert. He loved to play piano for
Speaker 1: the kids in the community, and he played cornet in
Speaker 1: a brass band. And because Jericho was a very small community,
Speaker 1: everyone knew about his fascination with precipitation in Bentley's collection
Speaker 1: of snow crystal photographs, which totaled more than four hundred,
Speaker 1: was purchased by the Harvard Mineralogical Museum, and that same
Speaker 1: year a professor at the University of Vermont named George
Speaker 1: Perkins heard about Wilson Bentley in his obsession with ice crystals.
Speaker 1: He had seen the photographs and was amazed. But Bentley
Speaker 1: had never written about his work, at least never successfully.
Speaker 1: He had made one attempt, but that had fallen flat.
Speaker 1: Writing skills were just not the best, and he never
Speaker 1: tried again. But George Perkins took Wilson's notes and turned
Speaker 1: them into an article that was published in Appleton's Popular
Speaker 1: Science monthly, and the two men shared a byline on it.
Speaker 1: And that article ends with a paragraph that, well, it
Speaker 1: may have been helped along by Perkins is very much
Speaker 1: in the style of writing that Bentley's later papers would
Speaker 1: show really for the rest of his life. It is
Speaker 1: a very sweet and wonder laden commentary on snow crystals,
Speaker 1: which reads quote, there is no surer road to fairyland
Speaker 1: than that which leads to the observation of snow forms.
Speaker 1: To such a student, the winter storm is no longer
Speaker 1: a gloomy phenomenon to be dreaded. Even a blizzard becomes
Speaker 1: a source of keenest, enjoyment and satisfaction as it brings
Speaker 1: to him from the dark, surging ocean of clouds forms
Speaker 1: that thrill his e your soul with pleasure. This was
Speaker 1: the first of many articles, papers, and books that he
Speaker 1: went on to write. Once he realized he could share
Speaker 1: what he was doing, it was like he couldn't stop.
Speaker 1: And his photographs had been made into an exhibition at Harvard.
Speaker 1: Suddenly he had the attention of a lot of people.
Speaker 1: He wrote regularly for the monthly Weather Review and other publications,
Speaker 1: always intertwining his scientific observations with this poetic style of writing.
Speaker 1: The first years of the twentieth century were very productive
Speaker 1: for Bentley. In nineteen o one, he published an article
Speaker 1: titled twenty Years Study of Snow Crystals that established a
Speaker 1: lot of ideas about snow and ice that were way
Speaker 1: ahead of their time. One of the most significant aspects
Speaker 1: of its contents was Bentley's observation that in all of
Speaker 1: the snow crystals he had observed, he had never seen
Speaker 1: to that were alike. He also stated that in his observations,
Speaker 1: the western and northwestern areas of storms produced the most
Speaker 1: perfect crystals. He also explained how he had come to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that conditions aloft were more important and influential
Speaker 1: to the formation of snow crystals than conditions closer to
Speaker 1: the Earth. That same year, Bentley had an exhibition of
Speaker 1: his photographs at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.
Speaker 1: Then just a month later, his work was featured in
Speaker 1: the quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society in England.
Speaker 1: So you may be wondering what does a person this
Speaker 1: obsessed with weather created ice crystals do when it is
Speaker 1: too warm for those to form. He studies precipitation in
Speaker 1: its liquid form. It turns out, at least that's what
Speaker 1: Bentley did, just as he had wondered what caused ice
Speaker 1: crystals to form in snow. He started investigating how rain
Speaker 1: actually formed in He started by trying to measure rain
Speaker 1: drops that He did this in a really inventive way.
Speaker 1: There were already some scientists measuring the splashes that raindrops
Speaker 1: left when they hit a piece of paper or some
Speaker 1: other surface, but Bentley started using flower. He spread the
Speaker 1: flower evenly across a tray and then passed that tray
Speaker 1: through the rain. As a rain drop hit this inch
Speaker 1: deep flower layer, it would form a tiny ball of
Speaker 1: simple dough. When those little drops of dough dried, he
Speaker 1: measured them to figure out the size the raindrop had been.
Speaker 1: He performed control experiments to compare by dropping measured amounts
Speaker 1: of water onto the flower himself, so that he had
Speaker 1: an existing data set to use. This is so ingenious.
Speaker 1: I like to go, oh, I can create a set
Speaker 1: and then I'll have that as my comparative measure. That
Speaker 1: just seems brilliant to me. Um And He measured hundreds
Speaker 1: of rain drops over the next seven years, culminating in
Speaker 1: an article in the Monthly Weather Review. The largest raindrops
Speaker 1: that he measured were roughly six millimeters. It's very roughly
Speaker 1: a quarter inch in diameter and He noted that, just
Speaker 1: as was the case with snowflakes and snow crystals, different
Speaker 1: types of storms created different types of rain. In particular,
Speaker 1: he observed that when lightning was overhead, there was a
Speaker 1: greater frequency of large rain drops. Even though he was
Speaker 1: doing a lot of really groundbreaking work, in terms of
Speaker 1: the reception from the scientific community, he got a lot
Speaker 1: of silence, and he probably would have liked any kind
Speaker 1: of feedback, even if it was critical. We don't know
Speaker 1: for sure why so few scientists even to acknowledge what
Speaker 1: he was doing. I mean, we've talked before about like
Speaker 1: the scientific establishment being really reluctant to people they perceived
Speaker 1: as amateurs. But at this point in history, most people
Speaker 1: were amateurs. So uh, people knew what he was doing,
Speaker 1: and it seemed kind of strange that there wasn't a
Speaker 1: lot of engagement from that quarter. It could have been
Speaker 1: a matter of his outsider status, Like I just said,
Speaker 1: nobody knew who this farmer from Vermont was, or how
Speaker 1: or why he had started studying meteorology, you with no
Speaker 1: formal schooling. Biographer Duncan Blanchard theorized that it could also
Speaker 1: have been the way that Bentley wrote about his work
Speaker 1: was not always really scientific in its tone. It really
Speaker 1: retained the wonder and the delight that Bentley felt for
Speaker 1: the natural world, and that may have led to it
Speaker 1: not being taken very seriously. But because of that, he
Speaker 1: was really forging ahead in an understanding of his subjects
Speaker 1: with no collaborators. He was breaking this new ground by himself,
Speaker 1: even though nobody else is really watching. And here are
Speaker 1: a couple more examples to illustrate what we're talking about
Speaker 1: when we say that Bentley wrote about his work in
Speaker 1: ways that were decidedly unlike the scientific community. In an
Speaker 1: article that he wrote for Technical World in nineteen, it
Speaker 1: opens with the lines quote, what magic is there in
Speaker 1: the rule of six that compels the snowflake to conform
Speaker 1: so rigidly to its laws? Here is a gem bestrewn
Speaker 1: realm of nature, possessing the charm of mystery of the unknown,
Speaker 1: sure richly to reward the investigator. It's very sweet, not
Speaker 1: super scientific sounding. Uh. And he ended that same article,
Speaker 1: which was titled snow Beauties, by writing quote, Indeed, it
Speaker 1: seems likely that these wonderful bits of pure beauty from
Speaker 1: the skies will soon come into their own and receive
Speaker 1: the full appreciation and study to which their exquisite loveliness
Speaker 1: and great scientific interest entitled them. Even A more technical
Speaker 1: article that Bentley penned in two to explain his photographic
Speaker 1: process gets a bit flowery quote. Every snowflake has an
Speaker 1: infinite beauty, which is enhanced by knowledge that the investigator will,
Speaker 1: in all probability never find another exactly like it. Consequently,
Speaker 1: photographing these transient forms of nature gives to the worker
Speaker 1: something of the spirit of a discoverer. Besides combining her
Speaker 1: greatest skill and artistry in the production of snowflakes, nature
Speaker 1: generously fashions the most beautiful specimens on a very thin plane,
Speaker 1: so that they are specially adapted for photo micrographical study.
Speaker 1: In just a minute, we are going to delve into
Speaker 1: something we haven't really touched how much yet, and that
Speaker 1: is Wilson Bentley's personal life. But first we will pause
Speaker 1: for a sponsor break. As Wilson Bentley was doing all
Speaker 1: of this research and writing, he was still also working
Speaker 1: the family farm. His father died in seven and at
Speaker 1: that point his mother was largely immobile and needed a
Speaker 1: great deal of care, and that care just became part
Speaker 1: of Wilson's responsibilities. He cooked for her and took care
Speaker 1: of her until her death in nineteen o six. His
Speaker 1: brother Charles, after a brief foray into growing oranges in
Speaker 1: Florida that ended in disaster with a freeze, had also
Speaker 1: returned to Vermont and helped run the family farm after
Speaker 1: that point, and the farmhouse had basically been split into
Speaker 1: two years earlier, when an addition had been made after
Speaker 1: Charles and Mary got married and after their parents were gone.
Speaker 1: Wilson lived on one side and his brother, his sister
Speaker 1: in law, and their eight children lived on the other.
Speaker 1: While an entire space to one person seems like it
Speaker 1: would be the less chaotic household, Bentley was apparently kind
Speaker 1: of a mess, so he tended to have piles of
Speaker 1: stuff everywhere, and while it looked baffling to his family,
Speaker 1: he generally has said to have known how to find
Speaker 1: things when he wanted them. As he matured, Bentley was
Speaker 1: a little disappointed that the people he lived alongside really
Speaker 1: never came around thinking that his work was anything more
Speaker 1: than a silly fixation. It appears from his writing that
Speaker 1: he had always really hoped that the people of Jericho,
Speaker 1: Vermont would see and understand that his efforts had real
Speaker 1: merit quote years ago. I thought they might feel different
Speaker 1: if they understood what I was doing. I thought they
Speaker 1: might be glad to understand. So I announced that I
Speaker 1: would give a talk in the village and show lantern
Speaker 1: slides of my pictures. They're beautiful, you know, marvelously beautiful
Speaker 1: on the screen. And when the night came for my lecture,
Speaker 1: just six people were there to hear me. It was
Speaker 1: free bind you, and it was a fine, pleasant evening too,
Speaker 1: but they weren't interested. Bentley stopped writing for scientific publications
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifteen, after a very lengthy article for monthly
Speaker 1: Weather Review had been rejected. He continued to take snow
Speaker 1: crystal photos, though, including photographing three thirty eight snow crystals
Speaker 1: over the course of nineteen snowstorms in the year nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: But then in the fall of nineteen twenty, Bentley had
Speaker 1: an explosion of press coverage and got the nickname the
Speaker 1: Snowflake Man. This started with an article in the New
Speaker 1: York Tribune that covered his lifelong career and examining and
Speaker 1: documenting snow crystals. Another right up, this one in the
Speaker 1: Boston Herald fall shortly after that, then another and Leslie's Weekly,
Speaker 1: and then one in the Boston Globe. The world seemed
Speaker 1: to be remembering Bentley after having forgotten him for a
Speaker 1: few years, and this time he was clearly in the spotlight.
Speaker 1: He sort of turned into an overnight sensation, but this
Speaker 1: was all based on work that he'd been doing for
Speaker 1: thirty five years at this point. Yeah, it reminds me
Speaker 1: of that thing where like anybody, like a writer, will
Speaker 1: suddenly have a hit book and people be like, what's
Speaker 1: it like to be an overnight sensation, and they're like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it's the same thing he was.
Speaker 1: To him, it was always just work, work, work. He
Speaker 1: also started to become kind of more of a science
Speaker 1: communicator for the masses. He started writing for non scientists
Speaker 1: and people with curious minds who just wanted to understand
Speaker 1: the natural world. He was essentially writing for people just
Speaker 1: like himself, and his work continued to grow in popularity
Speaker 1: as a consequence, and soon he had articles in the
Speaker 1: New York Times, National Geographic, and Popular Mechanics. Eventually this
Speaker 1: work turned into a lecture tour. All the folks of Jericho,
Speaker 1: Vermont may not have wanted to see Bentley's slides and
Speaker 1: hear him talk about snowflakes and rain drops. It turned
Speaker 1: out that a lot of other people did. He started
Speaker 1: selling his slides to schools, although he was not doing
Speaker 1: this for the money by any means. He never really
Speaker 1: made a lot of money off of it. And even
Speaker 1: though he was not as focused on scientific writings any longer,
Speaker 1: Bentley was still following his curiosity where it led him.
Speaker 1: In the natural world. He continued to track weather patterns,
Speaker 1: but he also developed a lot of other interests. He
Speaker 1: started collecting rocks for geological analysis, and he took photos
Speaker 1: of other things that were not snow crystals, including people
Speaker 1: and flora. And he also started doing something that sounds
Speaker 1: really odd and in today's world would undoubtedly be branded
Speaker 1: as creepy. He started cataloging smiles, particularly girls smiles. So
Speaker 1: he would talk to girls that he met on the
Speaker 1: street if he thought they had what he called a
Speaker 1: quote charming smile. And he seemed fascinated by the same
Speaker 1: thing in smiles that he was fascinated about snowflakes. No
Speaker 1: two are alike. So this is where we get to
Speaker 1: the squirrely part. That smile thing is odd, but There
Speaker 1: were also people who thought his affinity for the company
Speaker 1: of kids rather than adults was also odd. We mentioned
Speaker 1: that he loved to play music for kids, but he
Speaker 1: also did things like build them tree forts and take
Speaker 1: them fishing. Sometimes he would take some of them to
Speaker 1: Burlington to go to the movies, particularly girls. This definitely
Speaker 1: got some tongues wagging about whether this was appropriate or not.
Speaker 1: Biographer duncan Ce Blanchard interviewed some of the kids many
Speaker 1: years later as adults, and they defended Bentley as being
Speaker 1: excited to teach kids and to spend time with them
Speaker 1: because they had the same enthusiasm for things like nature
Speaker 1: and discovery that he did. He had enjoyed the nieces
Speaker 1: and nephews that lived on his brother's side of the farmhouse,
Speaker 1: and as they grew up, he seemed to take on
Speaker 1: a sort of uncle role to other kids in Jericho. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of those things that comes up and nobody
Speaker 1: really has any Like there was gossip, and there were
Speaker 1: people that were like, no, that's baseless, but we really
Speaker 1: have no idea if there was anything weird. But throughout
Speaker 1: the years he gained more recognition and he was always
Speaker 1: really ceaselessly generous with anyone who wanted copies of his slides.
Speaker 1: In one exchange, in a woman named Charlotte Bean sent
Speaker 1: him three dollars in a letter asking for photos, and
Speaker 1: he sent sixty of them along with a letter back
Speaker 1: in which he told her, quote, it was generous of
Speaker 1: you to tell me how much you enjoy the snow, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Photos for it gives me pleasure to learn so many
Speaker 1: are enjoying them. As the photos gained a wider audience
Speaker 1: and wider recognition for their beauty, he also got to
Speaker 1: see that they directly inspired other creators and his own words,
Speaker 1: he saw them used quote as models for designs in
Speaker 1: public schools and in schools of art. They are used
Speaker 1: for designnes, for interior decorators, for wallpaper, for silk doylies, china,
Speaker 1: any number of things. Even though he had not initially
Speaker 1: been recognized for his work, at least from the science
Speaker 1: side of things, that started to shift as he traveled
Speaker 1: and shared his thoughts on meteorology and gained a greater following.
Speaker 1: Then came a not insignificant gesture in recognition of those
Speaker 1: years of work, and that happened in nineteen twenty four.
Speaker 1: That year, he received a grant from the American Meteorological Society,
Speaker 1: the first research grant that organization ever issued. In nineteen thirty,
Speaker 1: an effort began to preserve Bentley's work with snowflakes in
Speaker 1: a book. A physicist named Dr William J. Humphreys, who
Speaker 1: worked for the U. S. Weather Bureau, initiated the project
Speaker 1: after having received requests for such a book over the
Speaker 1: years from people who had become familiar with the work
Speaker 1: of the snowflake Man, Humphreys started a fund raising endeavor
Speaker 1: to get the financial needs for the publication squared away,
Speaker 1: and once the money was secured, which it was pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: there was one UH donor who pretty much covered the
Speaker 1: majority of it. It was then on Bentley to actually
Speaker 1: put the book together, and he went through his years
Speaker 1: of snow and ice crystal research and all of his
Speaker 1: many slides of snow crystals, dew, and frost, and he
Speaker 1: wrote about the ways he had classified such things and
Speaker 1: what sorts of weather phenomena could be linked to various kinds.
Speaker 1: He finished this project in mid nineteen thirty one. In
Speaker 1: the book, titled Simply Snow Crystals, was published in November
Speaker 1: of that year, W. J. Humphries wrote the preface. After
Speaker 1: receiving his author copies, Bentley wrote to Humphries quote, I
Speaker 1: received three copies of our book Snow Crystals the day
Speaker 1: after Thanksgiving, and I am delighted with it. The text
Speaker 1: seems to me perfect and the half tones are superb.
Speaker 1: The second week of December one, just a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks after holding his book in his hand for the
Speaker 1: first time, Wilson Bentley was too sick to get out
Speaker 1: of bed. He waved off the concern of his family,
Speaker 1: saying that he would be fine, but his condition quickly
Speaker 1: got worse. Another week passed, but then Bentley's nephew called
Speaker 1: a doctor. At that point it was too late. He
Speaker 1: had pneumonia. Wilson Bentley died two days before Christmas nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one, at the age of sixty six. According to
Speaker 1: coverage of his funeral in the St. Albans, Vermont Daily Messenger, quote,
Speaker 1: Mount Mansfield and its foothills, where Mr Bentley had taken
Speaker 1: literally thousands of photographs of snowflakes, were blanketed in snow.
Speaker 1: The sun shone brightly from a perfectly clear sky. It
Speaker 1: was estimated that seventy five people attended Bentley's funeral service.
Speaker 1: One right up in the local press read quote, Wilson
Speaker 1: Bentley was a greater man than many, a millionaire who
Speaker 1: lives in luxury of which the snowflake man never dreamed.
Speaker 1: Bentley took more than five thousands snowflake photos in his life,
Speaker 1: and they're beautiful. He used the same Bellows camera from
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties right up until the end of his life.
Speaker 1: Five hundred of those photos or in the Smithsonian collection.
Speaker 1: Bentley donated them to ensure their safety. Most of his
Speaker 1: slides are cared for by the Jericho Historical Society. There
Speaker 1: are a few sets that are in other museum collections
Speaker 1: as well. And in twenty six of Bentley's images went
Speaker 1: up for sale at the American Antique Show. Ten of
Speaker 1: them were snowflake photographs. Remember he didn't only take photos
Speaker 1: of snowflakes, and those snowflake photos were priced at nearly
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars each. This would have undoubtedly been quite
Speaker 1: a surprise to Bentley, who once noted in his life
Speaker 1: that he had made about four thousand dollars in total
Speaker 1: for all of his snowflake work, and that he had
Speaker 1: spent about fifteen thousand doing it. You can also still
Speaker 1: buy Bentley's book Snow Crystals. You can and it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Do you have some listener mail to take us out?
Speaker 1: I did. This is from our listener Margaret, who writes
Speaker 1: High Holly and Tracy. I just finished your Saturday classic
Speaker 1: about Walter Potter, and I loved the Field Museum shout out.
Speaker 1: I live in the suburbs of Chicago, and it's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite places to visit. I have always thought
Speaker 1: the placement of the Tsavo lions was interesting. They're basically
Speaker 1: under a staircase, fully visible, but sort of out of
Speaker 1: the way, like even the other exhibits are afraid of them.
Speaker 1: I went to College Downtown and one of the extra
Speaker 1: credit assignments I got in an anthropology class involved going
Speaker 1: to the field and taking pictures with a bunch of
Speaker 1: specific artifacts. However, the ta who selected the artifacts was
Speaker 1: going off an old visit or something, because, despite the
Speaker 1: multitude of animals, he picked a bird that was nowhere
Speaker 1: to be found. One of the artifacts we did find
Speaker 1: is the bust of an Egyptian queen who looks exactly
Speaker 1: like Michael Jackson. Uh and Margaret attached to picture so
Speaker 1: we could see that's accurate. I haven't been there since
Speaker 1: the pandemic, she writes, but I'm eager to go back
Speaker 1: to see the space they've made for Sue, famous for
Speaker 1: being the most complete t Rex skeleton ever found, she
Speaker 1: graced the main hall for years, but was recently replaced
Speaker 1: by a replica of a much larger dinosaur. Sue moved
Speaker 1: upstairs or the other dinosaurs, but was still given her
Speaker 1: own special area. I hope you have a nice holiday season.
Speaker 1: Thank you for helping keep me saying. I work retail,
Speaker 1: but in a mostly office capacity, so I turn on
Speaker 1: podcast when i'm going to be in here a while,
Speaker 1: and yours is the first one I check for new episodes. Margaret,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for this. I always love hearing
Speaker 1: about people's love for the field because it's one of
Speaker 1: my favorite museums. I was a little bummed. I went
Speaker 1: to Chicago in that magical sort of I feel like
Speaker 1: there was a part of the calendar in parentheses where
Speaker 1: it seemed like things were getting much better for a minute.
Speaker 1: And I went there to see my best friend and
Speaker 1: we did not make it to the field that trip,
Speaker 1: and I was like, Oh, I'll come back in a
Speaker 1: couple of months and I can not been back so um,
Speaker 1: but I cannot wait to go back because I desperately
Speaker 1: love that museum. If you would like to write to us,
Speaker 1: you can do so at History Podcast at iHeart radio
Speaker 1: dot com. You can also find us on social media
Speaker 1: as Missed in History, and if you would like to subscribe,
Speaker 1: you can do that on the iHeart Radio app or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed
Speaker 1: in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows. M