Honors History goes to Printing Museum

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The morning of Wednesday, November, 16th, Mrs. Peterson’s Honors US History students were privileged to go on a field trip to the Crandall Printing Museum in Provo. Getting on a bus during 1st period they drove the 15 to 20 minute drive to the old museum just off of Provo's State Street.            

On arriving they met some employees who took them into a medium sized room where they would learn about the first printing press in the world, the Gutenberg Press. But before that lesson, they gave the students the history of the museum; the history class was told how it was the only museum in the world with the actual type and machines from printing past. Also, they were told that the History Channel will be doing a special on it in December, so if you want to, go check it out!      

After finishing that lecture, they were told of ancient times of when people had to use clay and rocks to write on. Imagine having to write on those!  During the 1400's, a man by the name of Gutenberg came along and invented the first printing press in the world, and it soon became one of the most important inventions of all time. In fact, during the 1400's, more than 5 million books were printed in Europe and  by then more people were learning how to read. Then, the workers showed the students how the old press worked. The students even got a glimpse of a page of the bible worth $100,000! The workers then led the students into another room where they learned about the printing presses of the 1700's that the American colonists used to make almanacs, newspapers, and copies of our country’s most important document, the Declaration of Independence. They liked the lesson, but the room they were in was really hot and stuffy, so when they were taken down to the basement they were relieved!          

Down in the cool room where replicas of the printing presses used in the 1830's to print the first 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon, they listened to the story of Mr. Egbert who owned the printing shop that the project was operated in, and how he was given an entire farm to do it! They were also shown two other printing presses used during the early 1900's to the 1980's called the Lino and Minotype machines. Running out of time, the last thing they saw was the replica of where the first copies of the Deseret News were printed in 1850.   Then the students said goodbye to the nice workers and were placed on the bus going back to Spanish Fork. On the way back, Mrs. Peterson said, “I loved this field trip. It follows the curriculum and it follows the history of our great country!” and student, Camry Young stated, “I liked this trip a lot! My favorite part was the Linotype machine!” The rest of the students said they had fun on the trip.

 

Attributions
By: Sawyer Hamilton