Print

Last week, I had the opportunity to go to a Special Collections lecture in the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University. Russ Taylor, the department chair of the L. Tom Perry Special Collections, gave the lecture. He discussed the history of print starting from clay tablets in Mesopotamia to the printing press and books that have pictures painted on the edges of its pages. He showed us examples of papyrus, bronze plates, medieval manuscripts, and printed bible manuscripts. In one lecture, he showed us the entire history of print—at least 4000 years crammed into a room in Provo Utah. It is amazing to think how much information we have.

By happen-chance I’ve learned much about printing. My second semester here at BYU, I took a calligraphy class. We discussed many of the different writing styles through-out the centuries, the different writing materials such as velum and paper, also different types of ink. I am fully aware of the time and energy hand-written documents take. I spent many hours trying to correct my flourishes and my serifs. Also as a student in Jerusalem, we talked about papyrus and stone carving. Just today, I was reading about the Dead Sea Scrolls and the new knowledge which their discovery brought. I’ve also been to a printing museum where they too, show the history of the printing press.

What does this mean? Written word impacts our lives without us ever thinking about it. How easy is it for us to go online to look at blogs and newspapers? Where is the nearest library? How many books do you have in your house? We are so accustomed to printed materials that we don’t think about the historical times when print was not accessible. Even 150 years ago, printing was expensive and hard to come by, but not anymore. We live in a revolutionary world where newspapers are going bankrupt and anybody can have a worldwide audience through the internet.

I read at least 3 hours every day and that is only homework not including the newspaper, books, magazines, or email. I don’t remember when I didn’t read or couldn’t write. It has always been important and it will always be important. It is hard for me to conceive of a time when people were not able to read or when books were not available to everyone. Books are powerful because they hold knowledge. Ancient or modern, print preserves culture and history which help us understand who we are and where we are going. But how often do we use it? In another class of mine, a professor was ranting and raving, like many of them do, about the fact that we don’t access information which only 20 years ago was so difficult to discover. Of course I was disinterested as he lectured on his hobby horse, but it is true. We, the children of the information age do not use what is at our finger tips. How lucky we are to have the printed word.

Print and Power

I went to the Crandall Printing Museum this week. It is on center street here in Provo. I've heard about it over and over again while I've attended BYU. I always wanted to go, and I finally went. Take a look at the website:

http://crandallmuseum.org/

In this museum they have three printing presses. They have a working replica of the Gutenberg press, Benjamin Franklin’s press, and a press that E.B. Grandin used to print the Book of Mormon.

We first watched a demonstration of Gutenberg’s press. Beginning with a demonstration on how he made his movable type. The museum explained that Gutenberg was a metallurgist. This is how he knew what metals to mix so that he could get a good metal combination to make his movable type. They printed a page from the Vulgate bible. I am a Latin student, not a very happy one after my test today, and it was interesting to see a replica of the Vulgate Bible. I’ve also taken a calligraphy class, and I understand what amount of work it takes to produce a illuminated bible. Printers makes my life so easy.

Next we moved to the Benjamin Franklin Room where the replica of Franklin’s press was located. There was also a replica of Franklin himself, one of the curators dressed up. They discussed the power that printing had in the colonies. Franklin was able to print some 500,000 copies of Paine's "Common Sense." When he did this, there were only two million colonists living in America. That means one out of every four colonists living in America had a copy of "Common Sense." I don’t know of any kind of literature today that would represent that type of dissemination. The Museum argued that without the press the American Revolution would have never occurred, saying that the printed word unified the colonists. After learning one in four Americans had a “Common Sense” I believe them.

Lastly, we saw a replica press that printed the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith went to the E.B. Grandin Print Shop which, as I learned, was the most modern printing press avaliable in the 1820's. For Joseph Smith to have such a modern press so close is remarkable. The museum showed us the entire process of printing the Book of Mormon-- from pressing the sheets, to hanging them, to stitching the binding together. The museum noted that E.B. Grandin, the printer, printed 5,000 books in seven months. This, I guess, was extremely fast for that time period because the printers reset a new page of the Book of Mormon every two minutes. It was incredible that they printed that many books that fast.

I was thinking how lucky I am to have books. Every day I read the newspaper, the Bible and the Book of Mormon. I read things on the internet, about Roman history, about American history. I even am reading Livy. I read ALL the time. We take books and printed material for granted. But are we grateful for the chance to read?

My wife is a High School Teacher. When she began to teach, she was surprised that the reading comprehension of her students. She would say many basic words like synopsis and summary, and they did not know the meanings of these words. Howeever, when we learn to read it changes everything. We gain power because we control what we learn. We gain power because we can spread ideas, concepts, and principles. Without the ability to read and write, we wanderer through life.