Ahhhhh, books. I love books. I know new e-readers are all the rage, they take up less room and you can easily travel with a ton of books loaded into your new tech and it doesn't take up much space. But...there is nothing like the feel of a book. The thrill of being the first to open a brand new book, the smell, the feel of the pages. And of course there's the thrill of reading an old book and wondering how many other people have turned its pages. It gives you a kind of connection to people you don't even know because of the shared experience of handling those pages, reading those words, and sharing that story.So, I can't begin to tell you how exciting it was to have a book donated to our collection that was printed around 1729!
The name of the book is Human Nature In Its Fourfold State written by Thomas Boston, a Scottish church leader who lived from 1676 - 1732. The book is a religious classic from Scotland and is still available in print today - just google it.
This particular book was well used by the looks of its condition. You can see from the picture that at some point it was covered with a lighter coloured, heavy paper.
In this picture you can see how someone tried to stitch the spine back together with string.
We also see a signature: Andrew Glagon____ owns this book, 1769. If anyone reading this can make out the full last name, please leave a comment in the comments box below.
Here we can see the signature of another owner of the book. It's signed Thomas Purvess, May 1, 1826.
In a world we people change their technology every few years or even months, it's amazing to think that this old printing technology has enabled this book to last almost 300 years. I'd like to see the giant tech companies beat that! Sometimes there really is no technology like old technology.
