By the year 1500 the names of more than one thousand printers are known, and the titles of about 30,000 printed works.

Assuming that the editions were small, averaging 300 copies, there would have been in Europe by 1500 about 9,000,000 books, as against the few score thousand manuscripts that lately had held all the precious lore of time.

In a few years the price of books sank to one-eighth of what it had been before.

"The gentle reader" had started on his career.
{10} The importance of printing cannot be over-estimated.

There are few events like it in the history of the world.