Originally typecases would all be locally designed. Each printer would bang up a typecase out of bits of wood to suit his own preferences. A different case would be made for different type sizes and different typefaces. Their layout would of course be the same. As time went by layouts would doubtless tend to converge: here’s an 18th century English layout from John Smith: The Printer’s Grammar (1755).

The two cases would be arranged one above and behind the other. The upper case contained Caps and Small Caps and other less frequently used sorts, and this arrangement gave rise of course to our common parlance distinction between upper and lower case letters. Whether the layout of this double frame of typecases from Oxford is the same as Mr Smith’s example or not, we cannot tell.

A composing frame from Oxford

The point of the two part arrangement was to cut down on arm movement in order to increase the speed of typesetting. The size of the space allowed for each sort was determined by the letter’s frequency of use. The most commonly used letters would be placed together in the middle, for the same reason. The upper case tended to be left in alphabetical order. But, lovers of tradition as printers must ever be, Cap J and Cap U followed Z, because in the earliest days of printing J and U were not used by English printers, and were only added on later!

The California job case, which originated in San Francisco, swept America in the mid nineteenth century and got rid of the upper/lower arrangement, putting caps on the right. It was alleged that it cut down ½ mile’s worth of arm travel a day as compared to its predecessor the Italic case layout. I guess experienced compositors had gotten used to having their Js and Us next to Z by then.

Note the spaces, Quad, Em quad and En quad almost next to the Caps, and the 3-em space nearer the middle of the lower case sorts, as it would be what was most frequently used as word space. A 3-em space is, confusingly, not 3 ems wide: three of them together will make up one em.

A visit to the Mackenzie & Harris typefoundery, from which this layout is a keepsake is highly recommended. It is housed in the same building in The Presidio in San Francisco as Arion Press, whose future, consequent upon the retirement of Andrew Hoyem, is we all hope in the safe hands of the Grabhorn Institute.