Type case
Compartmentalized wooden box used to store movable type used in letterpress printing
A type case is a compartmentalized wooden box used to store movable type used in letterpress printing.
Modern, factory-produced movable type was available in the late nineteenth century. It was held in the printing shop in a job case, a drawer about two inches (5 cm) high, three feet (90 cm) wide, and about two feet (60 cm) deep, with many small compartments for the "sorts" (various letters and ligatures). The most popular and commonly used job case design in America was the California Job Case, which took its name from the Pacific Coast location of the foundries that made the case popular. These cases allowed type to be compactly transported.
Traditionally, the capital letters were stored in a separate drawer, or case, placed above the case holding the other letters (this is why the capital letters are called "uppercase" characters, and the minuscules are "lower case").
There were a great variety of cases, and also variations in the "lay", or the assignment of the sorts into the compartments. Different printers had different house layouts even for the same design of case.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Type case”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Lead type case (25598835882).jpg by Thomas Quine, CC BY 2.0
- A Typesetters Sorting Case.jpg by Christian Friedrich Gessner, Public domain
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