Viewing these documents is a special experience. It's easy to let their contents become abstract thoughts in the back of our American consciousnesses, general concepts we live by and take for granted... we forget that they were written down, by real people, coming up with these "radical" ideas for the first time. Seeing the documents in person reminds you how tangible this way of life is, and how recently it came into being. This isn't the way things have "always" been. A couple hundred years ago, a group of men wrote down what they thought was the best way to ensure basic freedoms to a nation of people.
The documents are very large - paper sizes haven't "always" been 8.5x11" either. The Declaration of Independence is 29 7/8 in. by 24 7/16 in.; The Constitution is four sheets, approximately 28 3/4 in. by 23 5/8 in. each. The effect of this is that the sheets spread out before you, so you have to physically move a bit to read what you can (the Declaration was not properly taken care of for decades; it didn't occur to anyone to preserve it with the same care as the Constitution, and so it's mostly faded).
No photographs were allowed inside, as they are taking painstaking measures to preserve the documents on display. One interesting thing to see is John Hancock's signature, which is actually pretty legible, and where we get the slang for getting someone's signature. Here's a photo I pilfered from the Internet:
On the opposite side of the building from the entrance is the Navy memorial, which made for some good pictures of it in front of the Archives.
In the interest of getting to the end of these blog posts, I'm combining events when possible, so I will now move on to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing is not necessarily a Washington D.C. "essential," but it is a good thing to do at some point. It's probably an "essential" to do with kids, as it's an easy way to kill a couple hours and keep them entertained, all while in an air-conditioned building.
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing is, as you may have guessed if you do not know already, where our money is printed. A tour of the facility allows you to walk through the gallery windows above the printing presses and see sheets of bills being printed at several stages of the process, and a tour guide tells you what's happening, the materials used, the steps of the process, where they get cut, etc. If there are workers down below sorting or counting or inspecting bills, they will sometimes wave up at you and perhaps do a little goofing around with their uncirculated stacks of $100 bills.
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing locations in Washington, D.C. and Texas combined print hundreds of millions of dollars a day. It's hard to imagine that much money needing replacement each day, but then consider how many bills you've destroyed by leaving them in your pants multiple times through the wash, or how many coins you got as change and promptly lost, and the mere fact that money wears out after a while, and it starts to make a little sense. Still, the numbers are almost infathomable.
No photos allowed inside this building either, for obvious security reasons, but here's a short little video from HowStuffWorks.com that shows a couple clips of the printers: http://videos.howstuffworks.com/howstuffworks/54-how-money-is-made-video.htm
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