Seven months. The contract with E. B. Grandin’s print shop was signed on Aug 25, 1829 and the first copies of the Book of Mormon were available for sale by March 26, 1830.
Seven months seems like plenty of time to print a book, so it’s not surprising that the official histories of the Church don’t include a lot of detail about the printing itself. Joseph Smith himself simply recorded: “Whilst the Book of Mormon was in the hands of the printer, we still continued to bear testimony…” (DHC 1:74-75).
B. H. Roberts Comprehensive History of the Church doesn’t say much about the printing other than mention that the typesetter did most of the punctuation, that there was a second manuscript produced just for the printer, and he includes the account of Esquire Cole printing his own newspaper at night and on Sunday at the same print shop. Cole was illegally including excerpts from the Book of Mormon in his newspaper, peppering it with vulgarity, so that his readers could read it without paying the Smiths for it.
None of the accounts addressed anything special or miraculous about the printing of the book. They do include some useful details, such as: the printing was not done at night or on Sundays; it was completed at the rate of at least “one form [e.g. signature] per week”.
What else do we know about the original printing of the Book of Mormon? The type was set by hand, letter by letter. The typesetter needs to be able to read letters set upside-down and backwards, and manually insert spaces so that the lines are justified. It all has to fit perfectly in the “composing stick” so nothing falls out when it’s put into place. But not only did the letters have to be composed, they also had to be broken down and redistributed one letter at a time into two type cases – one for upper case and one for lower case. (Note that the terms upper and lower case came from the fact that the “capital” letters were in the upper case.)
Miracle #1, Typesetting: Gordon Weight, a former Deseret News typesetter in the 50s, estimated that it would have taken all seven months of the allotted production time just to set and break down the type. But the typesetter, John H. Gilbert, could not have worked full time on the typesetting because he was also one of the two pressmen. Perhaps he had help – but even his own record of the printing process didn’t mention another typesetter, only help with the actual printing.
Miracle #2, Printing: They used a manual press that of course needed to be inked manually using a leather ball filled with sand. (Note that rubber had not yet been vulcanized – that wouldn’t happen until 1843.) It printed 16 pages on one side of an 18X30 inch sheet of paper; then those same 16 pages were printed on the other side in such a way that opposite pages were in the correct places. When the paper was cut in half, each sheet made two 16-page signatures which were then folded into shape. To print 5000 copies of the Book of Mormon, that meant making 5000 impressions, front and back on 2500 sheets of paper for each of the 37 signatures needed. Weight estimates that the paper would have been a stack about 40 feet high.
Weight also estimated that it would have taken an hour to make 100 impressions, which means it would require 25 hours to do 2500 impressions on one side of a piece of paper. (That matches Gilbert’s own statement that it took “nearly 3 days to print each form”. That means it took 50 hours for each of 37 signatures, meaning it would have taken 8.5 months for the printing alone. Assuming the typesetting and printing couldn’t be done simultaneously (limited amount of type, not to mention the typesetter was busy helping with the printing), this would mean 15.5 months for the two jobs together. But wait, that doesn’t yet include the binding time.
Miracle #3, Binding: Binding 5000 books by hand required that all of the signatures be completed before the binding of even the first book. As each signature was completed, the sheets were cut in half, folded 3 times and clamped in a device which Grandin invented, called the Grandin Clamp. Then all of the signatures were sewn together by hand through the back of each signature, removed from the clam and trimmed to size with a hand paper cutter. Then the leather-wrapped cardboard covers were attached. Weight estimated that the binding would have taken two months after all the press work was completed. We are now up to 17.5 months. But it was completed in 7 months. Some sort of miraculous intervention must have happened – but what it was we don’t know.
Miracle #4: Mobs did NOT destroy this press as they did with other publications of sacred works of the restoration.
Other unusual events:
- Grandin originally refused to print the book, but then changed his mind.
- Invention of the Grandin Clamp
- Where did the type come from as there were no local foundries that provided sufficient type to set 6 pages at a time
- Where did the paper come from? Joseph Smith specified thin white paper, opaque enough not to see the print on the other side. The process for making that type of paper didn’t yet exist and most books were either printed on very heavy paper, or on only one side of the page. The paper was apparently all delivered mysteriously one night.
- Who paid for all this new type and special paper, as Martin Harris hadn’t yet sold his farm to make any payment for the materials or printing?
From John Pratt's calendar research: Did it matter that the Book of Mormon was finished by March 25th? Definitely, so that the Church could be organized on April 6, 1830 – in commemoration of the actual birth of Jesus Christ. If any of you follow John Pratt’s calendar research you’ll also find it interesting to note that the binding of the Book of Mormon finished on March 25, 1830 – the date of Christ’s resurrection according to both the Venus and Mercury calendars. He suggests that this is the “resurrection date of the Book of Mormon”. The following morning, the Book of Mormon officially went on sale.
