Off along a side street, near downtown Houston Texas sets a little inconspicuous building with a big history;  a history that lead humans to something beyond themselves and opened a means to communicate that changed the word forever.  

This museum is a museum of printed history.  Here a story is told about how human beings discovered the mysterious world of printing language so that others could read it and analyze it in their own understanding.

While human language has been around for tens of thousands of years, written language is actually fairly new.  While we take it for granted, writing a language requires a new whole thought of mind.  It deals in symbolism  Think about it, if you knew nothing about writing or the printed text and just watched television, how would you describe what is being said?  It requires the production of inscribed symbols to represent what is said out of someones mouth.  While we may think it is so simple, it demanded many years of integration of symbols for you and i to look at them and make sense of them.  Hence, the tower of Babel story in the Bible, or perhaps when you look at Chinese and just stare in confusion. You have to be trained in your mind what those symbols mean in pronunciation in order for them to make sense.  That was a huge evolution in the human mind.  To go beyond drawing a picture to drawing a symbol the represented a sound out of the human mouth.  It is still a problem in today's world with understanding because one group who does not understand another still breeds fear.

This little museum is a treat. It combines art with history, which is a true reconciliation of the history of printing and that of just pure history.  There is a a lot of art involved in this science.  And it gives you a good overview of how it was accomplished. While there area lot of areas of about just reading about the development of print there are many of hands on where you can come and be a part of workshops to show how they did it.

For thousands of years, the printed text held a certain power, because to majority it was unattainable. For instance the scribes of ancient Egypt were a part of the royal court and were often relied upon by the  Pharaohs in order to read and write the text they read and proclaimed.  For thousands of years writing depended upon them  It was not until Gutenberg in the mid 15th century that an actual printing press was created.  Until thl the writing was left to scribes who would spend countless hours writing down by hand what was said or printed before.

The Gutenberg Press, one of the most greatest advancements in human technology, and nearly unchanged for 400 years.


The advent of the printing press revolutionized how people could receive information. Once, the printed word was held to that of royalty,with the printing press it could be provided to the masses.  What was considered sacred and only available to the elite could now be held by anyone.  A revolution of the mind.





This little museum, a side corner in Houston, and off the beaten path of most visitors, offers a view to one of the most important discoveries of the world, that of the printed text.  It will take you through the history of its development and lead you to unexpected art, which is truly the basis of writing. One of my favorite sections is on the history of print in America.






Here there are postings of news paper publications from the U.S. from the time of being colonies to the Revolution, and the American Civil War.  One of these during the late 1700's; if you look off to the side is houses for sale and request for "Gentlemen of good stature" asking for marriage in conditions with that they are practitioners of the Realms Protestants.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.