Crandall Printing Museum

I had never noticed the red bricked building before. Even with the address scribbled on my history notes and a MapQuest print off I almost drove past it. What an odd assignment? Not that I had any problems with American Heritage being canceled for the entire week so we could visit the museum, but all the same. What was in those red brick walls that would “enrich my learning experience” so much that class should be canceled? After visiting the Crandall Printing Museum on Center street in Provo I knew what my professor found in those small well kept rooms; inspiration.
It started with ancient texts on: animal hide, stone, clay, waved sheep guts, cave walls, and about anything that could preserve information, and inspiration. I imagined myself scribbling on cow hide with animal blood on a stick, and I resolved to never curse slow internet access again. More important I realized if someone had enough dedication to write with dried reeds on soft clay rocks they felt that what they were saying was very important.
The presentation then explained monasteries roll in preserving scriptures. This will all sound ignorant and biased, but prior to this visit I imagined monks as these overweight men with bald heads sitting at a desk scribbling out ancient scriptures that they did not agree with and praying only when other people were around to watch. Don’t worry I would always speckle my scenario with a few monks to slow in the head to do anything besides copy text. I am pretty sure this is inaccurate. For starts monks were not dumb; they fluent in Latin. Next they loved the bible. Really! Not only did they write out the text, but they decorated the Bible with detailed depictions of Christ, saints, and nature. How could you stand sitting at a desk all day drawing pictures in something you did not love.
From there the presentation goes on to the Gutenberg Press. Genies, innovative, imaginative, creative, can I think of enough adjectives to describe Gutenberg? Nope the English language probably does not have enough good words to describe him. Up until now all I heard about Gutenberg was “he invented the first printing press” Well that phrase has a lot more in it than I thought, because he thought of it all in a time when hardly anyone read, wrote, and if they thought you were out of the norm they burned you for being a witch.
Visiting the Crandall Printing Museum helped me realize how much people want to read. Truly read, and write. It made me grateful for their dedication, but also humbled. I was humbled when I realized how much I take for granite. This I just wrote for example… thirty minutes tops, for History credit, I never even had to use ink, and you are reading it. Remarkable! All because someone over four thousand years ago thought that it would be a good idea if they wrote things down, and taught their children to write things down, and formed a language so they could write things down, and now I have it.