—There are two kinds of type cases and these are made to hold (1) the capital, or upper case letters, and (2) the small or lower case letters.
The reason the capitals are called upper case letters is because the case that holds them is set higher on the composing stand than the case which holds the small letters; this brings the small letters nearer to the hand of the compositor and as they are used more than the caps he can set the type faster. The arrangement of the cases is shown at [A in Fig. 66].
Fig. 66a. how the type cases are arranged
There are several schemes of type-cases but I shall only describe three of them. The first is a small type case 12¹⁄₂ inches square with 48 boxes in it and you can buy one for 35 cents. It is good enough for any one who doesn’t want to go to the bother of learning the regular case. A plan view of the lay of a regular upper and a lower case is shown at [B] and [C]. You will see that the e box in the lower case is larger than any other and this is because there are more e’s used in setting up a job than any other one letter. And you will also observe that the letters are distributed and the boxes spaced in a very uneven way, but this arrangement brings the letters that are used the most into the easiest places to reach.
Fig. 66b. the upper case
Fig. 66c. the lower case