The World’s Youngest Major Religion Shows Off the World’s Largest All-Digital Publishing House

When you enter the Church of Scientology publishing facility in Los Angeles, appropriately named Bridge Publications—you literally step into the future. The initial impression is one of awe as to the building’s sheer size—276,000 square feet filled with state-of-the-art digital machinery humming with the enormous production of everything from books to compact discs.

The Inside Scientology series will guide you through the various parts of this magnificent technological creation which is unlike any other in the world. In this episode cameras take you through a series of digital marvels which produce an incredible 385,000 books each week—all of them written by one man, L. Ron Hubbard.

It is the realization of a dream envisioned more than half a century ago in which all of Mr. Hubbard’s writings and lectures are made available to the entire world, translated into more than 50 languages. As the Church of Scientology now exists in 167 nations and features scores of new churches opened in just the last decade, a facility was needed to print, manufacture and distribute this wealth of work by Mr. Hubbard at a sensible cost.

When no such facility met its demands, the church teamed with Xerox engineers to create its own, many facets of which never existed before. And in this episode you will be amazed to see the innovations that went into creating Bridge, the only place of its kind in the world.

This largest all-digital publisher is completely self-contained, including administrative offices, manufacturing, printing and distribution in one location which also boasts of a 2.3-million-cubic-foot warehouse. Its machinery silently hums out product, running 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.

Camera crews capture the amazing synchronization involved in churning out so much material at minimal cost—all of it based on the organizational methods developed by L. Ron Hubbard to maximize efficiency without sacrificing quality. This is the reason why Bridge can produce 100,000 copies of Dianetics in English or 100 copies in Urdu for the same per unit cost.

Bridge also digitally recreates thousands of public lectures delivered by Mr. Hubbard between 1950 and 1967. These are immaculately enhanced from the original reel-to-reel audiotapes with such crystal clarity that it’s almost like listening live. Our cameras show you the remarkable process by which the lectures are transferred to compact disk format, mass produced and packaged beautifully via an all-digital assembly line.

Be sure to view this episode of Inside Scientology, the series which takes you behind the scenes of the religion and provides an intimate look at its institutions and practices. The series appears on the Scientology Network, available on satellite television, on streaming or video on demand and through mobile apps which can be downloaded for smartphones and tablets.