As Febvre and Martin report in L’Apparition du livre  (p. 
126), pocket-size books of devotion and books of hours were 
perhaps the most numerous among all the books printed in the 
first century and more of typography: “Moreover, thanks to 
printing and the multiplication of texts, the book ceased to 
seem a precious object to be consulted in a library: there was 
more and more need to be able to carry it about readily in order 
to refer to it or to read it anywhere at any time.”

     This very natural inclination towards accessibility and 
portability went hand in hand with greatly increased reading 
speeds which were possible with uniform and repeatable type, 
but not at all with manuscript. The same drive towards 
accessibility and portability created ever larger publics and 
markets which were indispensable to the whole Gutenberg 
undertaking. Febvre and Martin make clear (p. 162) that: