The terms “uppercase” and “lowercase” letters come from the way in which print shops were organized hundreds of years ago. Individual pieces of metal type – one per letter – were kept in boxes called cases. For more than 400 years this was how documents were printed, until a German immigrant invented the Linotype machine, which created a line of type. See a working 1936 Linotype machine, vintage printing presses, and learn about the legacy of the AFRO NEWS, the nation’s longest running Black-owned family newspaper, still in business today.
