By Emiko Bacon
Amidst the busy flow of traffic along Provo”s Center Street sits a quaint house transformed into a museum.
Here at the Crandall House Museum, history and the present meet each day.
“This museum is a museum of the printing of the scriptures. All other museums, I know of, are the history of printing,” said Louis E. Crandall, owner and curator of the museum.
The museum”s birth occurred ten years ago when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints loaned Crandall a “dummy” printing press.
This enabled Crandall to do an in-depth study of the printing of the Book of Mormon, he said.
“I found out the Book of Mormon was printed 16 pages at a time. I believe that the Church always thought that the Book of Mormon was printed eight pages at a time,” Crandall said.
After six years of research, Crandall and his late wife, Mabel, decided to mortgage their home and create the museum.
Within the walls of the museum are the stories told of Gutenburg, the first printer of the Bible and E.B. Grandin, first printer of the Book of Mormon. They also tell the story of Benjamin Franklin who printed works including Poor Richard”s Almanac, according to the museum”s pamphlet.
Visitors to the museum watch as Crandall demonstrates type casting and printing on an authentic replica of the Gutenburg press in Mainz, Germany.
Mikal Smith a senior, from Valencia, California, majoring in English, was intrigued by the museum.
“I was amazed what a tedious process printing is. It made me appreciate the printing of any book,” Smith said.
Smith is not the only one amazed with the museum of Center Street, Marie Crandall, wife of Louis E. Crandall, is fascinated with the history of the printing press.
“I do follow the lectures once in a while. It”s exciting for me to see how interested the people are about this kind of information. It makes me realize that a lot of people don”t understand Gutenburg and the many things that have helped mankind since,” she said.
An original page from one of Gutenberg”s Bibles is also on display, Louis Crandall said.
“If it wasn”t for Gutenburg, we wouldn”t have a personal copy of the scriptures,” he said.
The last historic event displayed at the museum is a room where the story of the printing of the Book of Mormon unfolds.
The highlight of the Grandin room is a replica of the Peter Smith Hand Press (Acorn Press), which was used to print the first 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon, Louis Crandall said.
Also housed in the Grandin room is a Monotype Casting Machine, which is the same type of machine used to set type one-letter at a time for the 1979 edition of the scriptures, he said.
The museum averages five lectures per week with 15 to 40 people, Louis Crandall said.
“By far the most rewarding thing is kids who just absolutely are captivated by the creation of the printed page,” he said.
