Members of the LDS church often look back at the invention of printing (and other technological advances) and God preparing the world for the Restoration of the Gospel. Assuming what we believe is true (as I do, of course) this makes sense as God would want to make it so the truth He was bringing back would be able to spread quickly and correctly - and since the main witness that what Joseph Smith was saying was true was the Book of Mormon - a 500+ page book - it makes sense for Him to worry about an efficient way to make books.
In any case, the tour starts with a replica of Gutenberg's original press (based on an olive press). Apparently, it's the only press where the type is the actual individual pieces of type set in the text of the bible. It's pretty cool. They even made a page to show us how. And they showed us his REAL most important invention - how to make the special type used to set the text of the Bible.
The next room was an American revolution room, where they had the text of the Declaration of Independence set, if I remember correctly. Another thing commonly believed to be divinely inspired, by the way, since it helped set up this country as a land of religious freedom where a new religion could expect at least SOME protection of the law. The press was essentially the same, just smaller... Technology, till this century, really didn't progress all that fast.
Anyway, the last room was the Book of Mormon printing room. The story of the publication of the Book of Mormon is really a miracle. Apparently, in order to print it in the amount of time that it did, they would have had to print 2 pages a minute - for 10-12 hours a day for 7 months straight. Now, 2 a minute is possible - some volunteers they had one time were able to do it... for 10 minutes... Awesome, eh?
Anyway, great museum, great tour, you should go. That is all.
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