I took a course in typesetting in the 1960s. We used hot-metal slugs which we pulled from a drawer. Each of the hundred compartments stored one symbol, perhaps up to 50 slugs of each. Sorting the slugs back into the compartments was an onerous but necessary task. The professor said, Whatever you do, don't pi the type (spill the drawer). Because it would take hours to re-sort thousands of tiny slugs.