Crandall Historic Printing Museum: A Diamond in the Rough

Walking through the wooden doorway felt like travelling back in time. The hardwood floors and colonial feel made it seem like I was touring historic monuments in Philadelphia. I had to keep reminding myself that I was in downtown Provo. The man behind the desk was very gracious and let me explore the rooms while also giving me a tour. There were four rooms with different replica presses in each: the Gutenberg press, Ben Franklin’s printing press, Palmyra’s Grandin press, and the original Desert News print shop.

I walked across the foyer and down the steps to the large open room which was of most importance to me—the room with the Gutenberg press. Along with the press, there were several glass cases with replicas and originals of artifacts spanning written knowledge from antiquity to the times of the Gutenberg press. There was a display about manuscript writing which, as we have discussed in class, preceded printing. Next to that was a small exhibit about the Chinese printing press, explaining the evolution of movable type in the East. There was first clay movable-type (960-1127), then wooden movable-type (1127-1279), tin movable-type (1271-1368), and finally bronze movable-type used widely during the Ming Dynasty. The display credited the Chinese by saying that Gutenberg would have certainly heard of the Chinese printing system with wooden moveable-type and it would have been his inspiration for his later metal type.

Chinese wooden movable-type

There were also displays on the many different types of Bibles. There was the Cooperstown Bible (1834) which was a Pinney Bible that Joseph Smith used to write the Joseph Smith translation of the bible.  There was also an exhibit on the Breeches Bible (1589) which was the “Bible of the Pilgrims”. The reason it was called the Breeches Bible is because of this one passage:

There was also an original leaf or page from the first King James Bible—how exquisite!

And look at that! There was even the Rosetta Stone! (It was seriously creepy how much this place related to our class) It amazed me how small each of the fonts were on the stone, and from experience, carving that small and especially on stone would be extremely difficult. 

Rosetta Stone replica

There was also a cuneiform clay tablet dating back to 1900 B.C. in Mesopotamia, which reminded me of the artifact that the Greek group and I made. And there was even a replica of the Phaistos disc found at the Temple of Phaistos during the time of the ancient Minoans, who I researched for written knowledge.

Phaistos disc of the ancient Minoan civilization

 

After I had looked through all the glass-enclosed exhibits, the man explained how the replica of the Gutenberg Press worked. (Fun fact: It’s the only working Gutenburg press in the world) The press resembled an olive press, which is very similar. When you move the large handle to the left, it forces the template to stamp ink onto the perfectly aligned page. It was then hung out to dry. Now the man explained the intricate process by which creating the templates took place. I will delegate this narrative to a sign in the shop which detailed the extensive and specific process: “Gutenberg’s invention consisted of an ingenious combination of mold and matrix. A letter was engraved in relief on a hard-metal punch, which was struck into a small slab of softer metal to provide a matrix. The matrix was placed at the bottom of a mold capable of casting shanks of metal of the same height, but which could be adjusted horizontally to accommodate the individual matrices of varying widths, that is letters from the narrowest to the widest. Molten metal was poured into the mold, and allowed to cool, the resulting product being a character in relief at one end of a shank of metal, long enough to be grasped between finger and thumb. Such types could be composed into words and lines, and being of constant height could be locked into a frame to present a uniform and rigid printing surface”.

type separated into upper case and lower case

Obviously, in this lengthy process, there were a lot of individual types created, enough to use in 2 whole pages of the bible. These were put into compartments as seen below. This soon became the origin of "upper case" and "lower case" letters, with the upper case in the top boxes, and the lower case in the bottom boxes.

printed page after illumination

page after printing

It was interesting to see that print still had remnants of manuscript culture—on the pages printed, there were spaces left for illumination and the coloring of the first letter of every sentence, which was still done by hand. My tour guide demonstrated the process of punching out every letter and rearranging them to form the printed templates. It was still a long and laborious process, compared to modern-day standards, but this was still a revolutionary idea that once the template was made, infinite copies of that text could be made.

I also visited the other 3 rooms as he explained the role of the printing press in American and Mormon history. Stay tuned for a follow-up post about that!

Moral of the story? Everyone should take a trip back in time and visit the Crandall Printing Museum. Who knew that such a treasure was on Center Street in Provo, Utah? Now you do.