The Crandall Printing Museum

Last week, instead of having our regular religion class, we went on a tour of the Crandall Printing Museum. This is a short synopsis of my visit.

Wednesday afternoon rolled around. I left my backpack in my locker and headed off on the 20 minute walk to the museum. As I approached the location, I glanced around trying to determine what side of the street it was on. I couldn't see any large buildings or anything that looked remotely like a museum. I continued to walk down the street and reached a small house with a sign on it announcing it was the Crandall Printing Museum. It was so adorable and old-fashioned looking that I was suddenly really excited for this tour. I walked inside and saw three old men standing in the front room with workers aprons on. I signed the guest log and then walked into the first room which held a large old printing press and dozens of artifacts that had to do with printing.

The first of the three old men started to tell us about the history of the printing press, the unique challenges that had to be dealt with in creating it, and even made a letter for us to look at. It was really neat, I learned that the Crandall Printing Museum is the only museum with individually laid letters of two entire pages of the old bible. We got to walk up and see each individual letter and then watch as the tour guide printed a page for us the same way Gutenberg would have printed a page. After looking seeing all this, we walked into the Benjamin Franklin room and learned about his experience with printing and how it factored into the Declaration of Independence.

The final room was made to look like the room that the book of Mormon was printed in. It had the same basic printing press, except it was made of Iron instead of wood. it had the first 16 pages of the Book of Mormon laid out on the press, each individual letter it's own piece. We learned how they printed the Book of Mormon and how it was bound. The kind old man in charge of giving this part of the tour explained the seemingly impossible task of printing 5000 copies of a book in the short amount of time it took them to do it and bore his testimony on the extra strength God must have given the young boys working the press to help them finish on time.

As we left the museum, I couldn't help but think about how incredible the whole experience was. A tiny quaint building with three kind old men running it. The old fashioned look and the authenticity of the artifacts. I really think it is incredible how much the printing press changed the importance of books and how long it lasted in it's simple form until it was turned into a factory machine that could produce thousands of books at a time. I love old books and I really loved learning about this piece of history. I like it even more because it can be linked to my religion. I live in a country where people are allowed to give tours that end with the publication of the Book of Mormon, and I live in a state that isn't afraid of offending people by doing so.