Thursday, December 11, 2008

Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley



In honor of our beautiful unexpected snow last night, here is a link to a collection of photographs of snowflakes. I didn't have any idea that there was a collection until I found this on The Librarians Internet Index. The pictures were taken by Wilson Alwyn Bentley (1865-1931) who is considered "America's First Cloud Physicist." This collection of over 1000 images has been cataloged by the Schwerdtfeger Library, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Each snow flake is classified by type and can be browsed or searched online. Here is the link: http://library.ssec.wisc.edu/bentley/
There is also a web site dedicated to Wilson Alwyn Bentley here:
A quote from Bentley: "Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated., When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind."


1 comment:

Native Pride said...

I went to the site and the snowflakes are so neat. We were always told no 2 snow flakes were a like.