Upper-Case, Lower-Case, and the Hellbox

I’ve been reading up on printers terminology back in the days of movable type.

You know, our term uppercase comes from the fact that printers kept letters in two different cases, and they used the small letters most of the time, and so those were kept in a case that was lower and more easily accessible. and The uppercase letters were the capital ones that were used every once in a while.

But another term that I didn’t know, Grant, was hellbox. Do you know this term?

I have heard of hellbox, yeah. Have you? Where did you come across it?

I was just reading about printer slang in general.

Okay. The hellbox was the receptacle where printers could throw type that was damaged or just discarded. And then young apprentices in the shop had to sort out that type to find out if there was any that was reusable and then just empty the rest of this heavy hell box.

And I just love this term hell box. I think I’m going to start applying it to our junk drawer.

Yeah, the hell box. And then what they would do is melt it down and recast it and make new type out of it.

Right. So I guess it sort of went to hell.

Yeah, maybe that’s a, it was literally going to the fires.

Yeah, yeah, it could be.

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