This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is our American stories, and we tell all kinds of stories here on this show, as you know.

Jerry Bergman has taught science

for 45 years at university in subjects like biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology,

geology, and microbiology. He has nine degrees in the field of science, including seven graduate and postgraduate degrees.

Dr. Bergman is here to tell us the story of a teenage boy who became interested in snow.

On January 15, 1885, at 20 years of age, he became the first person in the world to photograph a snowflake.

Here's Dr. Bergman with the story.

Well, his background is, he's from Vermont and a lot of snow there, and he became interested

in science.

And his parents were very supportive.

They, even though they really couldn't afford it,

they bought him things like a microscope and a camera so he could take pictures. And among his

many interests was the weather. He did, he actually charted the weather and tried to correlate

the weather with other events. But he became especially interested in snowflakes. And he could, with a small magnifying glass,

he could see they look different.

And so he tried to figure out why are they different?

What's going on here?

And, of course, the problem is a microscope requires light,

and light produces heat.

And the heat melted the snowflakes.

So he had to come up with a way of getting it cold enough to get the snowflakes

...