The First Ever Photograph of a Snowflake was from New England

We learned in 1st grade, that no two snowflakes are alike.

It always fascinated me, that like fingerprints, no two snowflakes would be alike. You'd think in the mathematical possibilities of the universe, that finding two matching snowflakes wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility. Although, to be honest, we didn't even know that was the case until about 150 years ago.

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Before that, it's likely that no one really gave any thought at all as to what snowflakes looked like. If anything, I imagine that snow was just seen as an overall menace to society in the 1800's. A ton of snow basically stopped all progress until spring. But around 1885, all that changed.

A Vermont man started getting curious...

In the late 1800's, a teenager at the time named Wilson Bentley, got a microscope for his birthday. Bentley was already a massive weather enthusiast at the time, keeping records of daily weather, rainfall, etc. A few years later, Bentley managed to rig a camera up to his microscope.

Lo and behold, he took his first photo of a snowflake in 1885. He was engaging in a new trend at that time called "photomicrography". Basically, it was the art of taking big photos, of very small things. Bentley's photographs eventually changed the world would see snowflakes forever.

An important discovery...

Over the course of a few decades, Bentley took thousands of photographs of snowflakes. During this period, it became very obvious to him and others, that there was no pattern to the snowflakes, as far as appearance. Essentially, Bentley was also the first one to discover that no two snowflakes were alike.

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I guess it should be no surprise that New England would be the spot where all the cool snow stuff would happen. I imagine the folks that live in upstate New York or Northern Michigan were too busy digging their way out all the time to care what the flakes looked like. Plus, we're just a curious bunch over this way...