Crandall Printing Museum

I went to the Crandall Printing Museum this week. I've heard about it over and over again while I've been here at BYU. I finally went. It was really good. Take a look at the website:

http://crandallmuseum.org/

They have three presses. They have a working model of the Gutenburg press. They even demonstrated how he made the letters. I think that was my favorite part.

They also have a replica of Benjamine Franklin's press. They discussed the power that printing had in the colonies. Franklin was able to print some 500,000 copies of Paine's "Common Sense." There were only two million colonists at that point. That means that one out of every four people could read "Common Sense." They argued that without the press the American Revolution would have never occured. It unified the colonists.

Next we saw a press that is a replica of the press that printed the Book of Mormon. The museum showed us the entire process of printing the Book of Mormon. The printer printed 5,000 books in seven months. It was extreamly fast. The museum said they reset a new page every two minutes. It was incredible that they printed that many books that fast.

We take books and printed material for granted. It is so easy to hop onto the web and learn something. But do we really learn? What power books have in our lives. I'm greatful for the Book of Mormon. It is one book that has changed my life.