“As early as 1727, William Ged, of Edinburgh, invented a means of pressing a type form into material that could then be used as a matrix to make a casting duplicating the form. Ged’s invention was strongly opposed by the printers of his time, but in 1794, Firmin Didot became interested in the machine and experimented with the inventions of Ged and others. It was Didot who gave the process its name: stereotype, the prefix ‘stereo’ describing the solidity of the printing unit.”

—Warren Chappell, A Short History of the Printed Word, 1970.