Until the mid 19th century, text type was cast in metal and set by hand one letter at a time. This involved so many pieces of type that separate “cases” (shallow trays with compartments for each letter) were developed to house the fonts of type. The small letters, which were used far more often than the capitals, were placed for convenience lower and closer to the typesetter: hence the name “lowercase” for these letters. Conversely, capitals were placed in an upper case, which is why they are frequently referred to as “uppercase” letters.

Today I learned that cases are in fact named after cases. Cool.