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As early as the year 1507, Jacob Wimpheling draws attention to the fact that nothing can give so good an idea of the activity and many-sideness of German intellectual life at that period as the consideration of the rapid diffusion of the art of printing, which not only converted all the towns of Germany, great and small, into intellectual workshops, but also, by means of German printers, established itself in the course of a few years in Italy, France, Spain and even in the far North.
