In the early 1900s, Wilson A. Bentley sent 500 prints of his snowflakes to the Smithsonian to ensure their safety for the future. The images are now part of the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.

On January 15th, 1885, he captured the first image of a snowflake. Bentley spent the next 25 years capturing images of snowflakes and keeping meteorological records. He took over 5,300 photographs ...

Over the course of 40 years, Bentley perfected techniques for making microphotographs of snowflakes and made thousands of such images (500 of which he donated to the Smithsonian). Every flake in ...