Speaker 1: This is our American stories, and we tell all kinds
Speaker 1: of stories here on this show. As you know, Jerry
Speaker 1: Bergman has taught science for forty five years at university
Speaker 1: in subjects like biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology.
Speaker 1: He has nine degrees in the field of science, including
Speaker 1: seven graduate and postgraduate degrees. Doctor Bergmann's here to tell
Speaker 1: us the story of a teenage boy who became interested
Speaker 1: in snow. In January fifteenth, eighteen eighty five, at twenty
Speaker 1: years of age, he became the first person in the
Speaker 1: world to photograph a snowflake. Here's doctor Bergman with the story.
Speaker 2: Well, his background is he's in Vermont and a lot
Speaker 2: of snow there, and he became interested in science, and
Speaker 2: his parents were very supportive. They even though they really
Speaker 2: couldn't afford it. They bought him things like a microscope
Speaker 2: and a camera so he could take pictures. And among
Speaker 2: his many interests was the weather. He actually charted the
Speaker 2: weather and tried to correlate the weather with other events.
Speaker 2: But he became especially interested in snowflakes, and he could
Speaker 2: with a small magnifying glass he could see they looked different,
Speaker 2: and so he tried to figure out what, why are
Speaker 2: they different, what's going on here? And of course the
Speaker 2: problem is a microscope requires lights, and light produces heat,
Speaker 2: and the heat melted the snowflakes. So he had to
Speaker 2: come up with a way of getting it cold enough
Speaker 2: to get the snowflakes and examine them work quickly so
Speaker 2: he could get pictures without the snowflakes melting, and he
Speaker 2: was finally able to do that. In fact, he was
Speaker 2: the first person ever to get a photograph of a snowflake,
Speaker 2: and so that was quite a invention for a young boy.
Speaker 2: Was home schooled by the way, he didn't go to
Speaker 2: public schools, and his parents his mother was a teacher,
Speaker 2: so she was very supportive of his work, so he
Speaker 2: was somewhat independent, I guess his whole life. His full
Speaker 2: name was Wilson or Willie. They called him his childhood
Speaker 2: name Bentley, and his name often is called snowflake Bentley
Speaker 2: because he did so much work in this area and
Speaker 2: he wanted to explore the world of science firsthand, and
Speaker 2: he saw God not only in the scriptures, but he
Speaker 2: saw God in the natural world. And as a result
Speaker 2: of his studying the natural world, he just realized he
Speaker 2: could learn a great deal about God through studying God's creation,
Speaker 2: and once he noticed they were different, he wanted to
Speaker 2: photograph them because he felt that the glory of God
Speaker 2: can be revealed through snowflakes. And of course people thought
Speaker 2: that was silly, because come on, the glory of God
Speaker 2: can be revealed through snowflakes. This is silly. But he
Speaker 2: saw snowflakes as miracles of beauty, and it seemed to
Speaker 2: him the beauty of this should not be hidden, It
Speaker 2: should be seen and appreciated by others. So how can
Speaker 2: you do that. You can do that basically by getting pictures.
Speaker 2: And when he photographed them, he realized that the key
Speaker 2: is the conditions. Can't be too cold because then the
Speaker 2: snowflakes are brittle. It can't be too warm because then
Speaker 2: the snowflakes melt. And so therefore he really was a
Speaker 2: good experimentalist. I mean, he must have spent hours and
Speaker 2: hours and hours of failures and he realized that, well,
Speaker 2: this has to be done, and he had things all
Speaker 2: set up to get pictures, and something would happen. He
Speaker 2: didn't get a picture. He wasn't fast enough, and so
Speaker 2: he had to work out his system so that he
Speaker 2: was able to accurately get snowflakes, and once he did so,
Speaker 2: he was able to photograph a few ten fifteen, twenty,
Speaker 2: and then after a while he ended up with about
Speaker 2: five and snowflake images for the forty six years that
Speaker 2: he worked on this, and so he had a lot
Speaker 2: of pictures. One interesting thing is is that even though
Speaker 2: he wasn't a scientist, never went to school, he was
Speaker 2: home educated, he ended up publishing in some of the
Speaker 2: leading science magazines in the world. He wrote the article
Speaker 2: on snow for the Encycopedia Britannica, and that was quite
Speaker 2: a privilege in his day and well today as well.
Speaker 2: And then he eventually published a coffee sized table book
Speaker 2: of six thousand photographs titled Snow Crystals, and the book
Speaker 2: was published by the leading publishers McGraw hill, and so
Speaker 2: this was quite a coupe for a young man who
Speaker 2: was home schooled. He also published articles on snowflakes in
Speaker 2: Popular Mechanics magazine, in the world's leading scientific magazine called Nature,
Speaker 2: and of course in the more common widely circulated magazines
Speaker 2: like the National Geographic. In nineteen twenty three, unfortunately, I
Speaker 2: have of most of these magazines, so I was able
Speaker 2: to look them up in the nation geographic and from
Speaker 2: our standards today, they were good and beautiful, but not
Speaker 2: to the quality that we can get today today. The
Speaker 2: techniques are such where we end up with incredibly gorgeous
Speaker 2: pictures of snowflakes. And I have four or five books
Speaker 2: which illustrate this, and you can see the beauty is
Speaker 2: there quite vividly, and you can appreciate more than in
Speaker 2: his day. But on the other hand, on his day,
Speaker 2: you know, seeing a picture of a snowflake just astounded people,
Speaker 2: and that's why he became his work became so popular.
Speaker 2: Another contribution he made which turned out to be very important,
Speaker 2: was every snowflake, as far as he could tell, was different,
Speaker 2: and he wondered why why are they different? And so
Speaker 2: he studied the process of the manufacture, the production of snowflakes,
Speaker 2: and realize they fall in certain conditions, They move upward
Speaker 2: because of weather conditions, so they move up and down
Speaker 2: in the clouds, and after a while they end up
Speaker 2: being exposed in different amounts of heat and cold in
Speaker 2: different conditions, and that produces the variety that we see
Speaker 2: in snowflakes. But you discovered they all have either six
Speaker 2: sides or three sides. And now we understand part of
Speaker 2: the reason for the difference is because water molecules are
Speaker 2: not all the same. We have a water molecule called deuterium,
Speaker 2: which is called heavy water, which is a little bit
Speaker 2: different than most common water molecules. And now this is
Speaker 2: a rare molecule. It's not found very commonly. But each
Speaker 2: snowflake is made out of several hundred trillion water molecules.
Speaker 2: And so even if we only have a few of
Speaker 2: these molecules that are deuterium, we therefore end up with
Speaker 2: differences because of these few molecules. Because when you're talking
Speaker 2: about one thousand million billion water molecules, even if you
Speaker 2: have a million billion than these ruge molecules such as
Speaker 2: deuterium produce differences. And so he really did a lot
Speaker 2: of work in chemistry and physics, in science and understanding
Speaker 2: specifically why there are so many snowflake differences. And so
Speaker 2: therefore it helps us appreciate the variety in nature. And
Speaker 2: one thing you learn about nature when you study nature
Speaker 2: is there is an enormous amount of variety everywhere in animals.
Speaker 2: In Beatles, one scientist said God has an inordinate fondness
Speaker 2: of beatles because he made so many kinds, and I
Speaker 2: guess there are six seven thousand different kinds of beatles,
Speaker 2: and so therefore one thing we know when we look
Speaker 2: at the natural world is enormous variety everywhere, even in snowflakes.
Speaker 2: And his inspiration, again was to understand God's creation. You
Speaker 2: learn about God by studying his creation, which is true
Speaker 2: because you learn about an artist by studying his artwork.
Speaker 2: You learn about a musician by studying his music compositions.
Speaker 2: You learn about God by studying his creation. And of
Speaker 2: course his creation would be the natural world. And so
Speaker 2: I've course, my background is science, so I agree that
Speaker 2: that's true in many scientists that I know, their motivation
Speaker 2: is to understand and learn about God, and certainly we
Speaker 2: can see that was true in Snowflake Bentley. That's why
Speaker 2: I became fascinating with him, because he's different. He's not
Speaker 2: the usual person who goes to colleagues and gets his
Speaker 2: PhD in physics and goes on and studies nature. He's
Speaker 2: totally home grown, and therefore he was original and wasn't
Speaker 2: constrained by the belief back then that you'll never photograph
Speaker 2: snowflakes because it just can't be done because the heat
Speaker 2: of the microscope. You've got to get light in there
Speaker 2: to see it, and that light is heat, and therefore
Speaker 2: that's going to melt the snowflakes. He can't do it,
Speaker 2: and he had a hard time at first. He failed,
Speaker 2: I think for two or three years and he wasn't
Speaker 2: able to get one single photograph, but eventually he got thousands.
Speaker 2: As Edison once said, the key to invention is not creativity,
Speaker 2: but simply perseverance, keep trying, keep working. The local elementary school,
Speaker 2: I was asked to come in and do a presentation
Speaker 2: on Snowflake Bentley because they studied him in this school,
Speaker 2: and so he still his ideas and his example still
Speaker 2: inspires young people today, and there are a lot of
Speaker 2: children's books about him, and so therefore it's a good example,
Speaker 2: a good example for all of us.
Speaker 1: Great work is always by Greg Hengler for picking up
Speaker 1: this story and for producing the piece, and a special
Speaker 1: thanks also to Jerry Bergman for sharing the story of
Speaker 1: Wilson Willie Bentley a beauty here on our American Stories