Divided lay,

Divided lay,

ca. 1900.

Before the rise of automated typesetting, moveable type was arranged and housed in wooden type cases with dozens of small compartments or “boxes,” each devoted to a specific letter or “sort” of type. The type cases shown follow a pattern common in 18th-century English printing offices. They form a “divided lay,” which distributed a font (English, “fount”) into two separate cases: one for lowercase letters, and one for capitals—hence the terms “lowercase” and “uppercase.”

From the collection of Rare Book School