The Crandall Museum

This week, instead of attending class as normal, we attended a tour at the Crandall Printing Museum. The really cool thing about this museum is that it has exact replicas of old printing presses. The guides don't just tell you how the presses were used and made, but we actually got to participate in using the press to print a sheet.

Another interesting thing is how small the museum is, there are only three rooms in the tour. The first room has a Gutenberg printing press in it, set up just like Gutenberg's printing press would have been. The tour guide, dressed in printers garb, explained how the printing press was invented. He explained how Gutenberg had to create unique inks and metals to accomplish what was needed to actually make the press.

The next room was dedicated to the Declaration of Independance. The room had a slightly more modern press, though it was essentially the same. The guide in this room described how the printing press helped the American Revolution occur.

The last room was designed to look just like the place that the Book of Mormon was printed in. The tour guide explained the miraculous series of events that allowed so many copies of the Book of Mormon to be printed at the same time. The location of the restoration, the completion of the Erie canal, and the newer steel printing press all came together at just the right time and place for the printing of one of the most important books in my life. I just think it's pretty cool.