Today was a very exciting day for me; I have not been on a field trip since high school and it was about time I ventured out into the wider world in an academic atmosphere. After a slight delay with the T (what else is new) I found myself in a room occupied by lots of paper, ink, tools, and wood. The Printing Office of Edes & Gill was consequently a step back in history. I missed the introductions, but arrived in time to help actually print a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Using the machine, watching the ink be applied and pulling the actual press, really put me in the mindset of someone who wrote and had their work printed on such a device. How exciting would it have been to watch your thoughts so interestingly and impersonally put down on paper, not to mention the switch of physicality from writing to pressing. Had the individual wrote many, many copies of what they created, they would have been so consumed by the time commitment of distribution that a new creation wouldn’t occur for a long time (or, perhaps, so in debt to a scribe that they wouldn’t have the leisure of creation). By seeing the creation that allowed for the rapid explosion of other creations was another great way for me to grasp the concept of text as a technology. The art behind the words that I can read on a page is magnificent, and until the first day of this course I was completely unaware of it. Also, however laborious the act of printing is, it is not until today that I actually grasped the advance of printing from hand writing a document. Of course printing was faster, I could comprehend that, but I also knew that there was a lot of time and effort put into setting up one page, or creating the letters themselves. By watching the kind of skill and effectiveness of printers (the people, not the machines), it made sense. Sure, typing a document and putting it on the internet is quicker, but now I appreciate and admire those scholars and printers of old who took the time to see their ideas and works given to the world.