Printer’s Manuscript of the Book of Mormon, 1923 Photostatic Copies

In 1922, E. Hobson Tordoff, a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now Community of Christ), was assigned to conserve the printer’s manuscript. He took the manuscript to Berkeley, California, where he separated the still-attached bifolium pages, reattached with clear adhesive the pages that were cut horizontally, and, in 1923, produced photographic facsimiles of the entire manuscript. (See JSP, R3, Part 1, p. 7.) The images that survive today are slightly irregularly cut but generally measure 13 x 7¾ inches (33 x 20 cm). They are photostatic copies, which are negative images on paper. It is unclear if these versions are the original format created by Tordoff, or if these are later copies of earlier, nonextant images. For purposes of presentation on the Joseph Smith Papers website, the photostatic copies were optically scanned. The resulting digital images were inverted and the color and tonal range adjusted automatically using Adobe Photoshop to improve readability. A comparison of the original photostatic negatives with the inverted and enhanced images may be viewed here.

For more information on the Printer’s Manuscript of the Book of Mormon, see Revelations and Translations, Volume 3: Printer’s Manuscript of the Book of Mormon.