What is the origin of Uppercase and Lowercase Letters

The terms uppercase and lowercase letters or characters are used commonly today in the language of desktop publishing.

Have you ever stopped to think where the terms originated?

Strangely enough most publishing terms actually come from the old print industry. When documents were originally put together for printing, all the letters had to be manually placed onto the press before the page was pressed.

All the characters were stored in the printer’s case of letters, which had an upper part of the case where capital letters were stored, and a lower part of the case where the other letters were stored. Thus was born the language of upper case letters and lower case letters.