Ludlow line caster
The Ludlow casting machine is a device for typesetting with dies and then casting lines of lead type. The machine was developed in 1909 by William A. Reade in America. It was named after the American inventor Washington I. Ludlow. Both had previously worked together on a similar machine. The casting machine was presented in Europe in 1921. It essentially consists of two parts, the special angle hook and the casting machine.
The matrices from set cases are inserted into the special angle hook by hand . They have the letter shape to be poured on their underside and a letter engraving on the top for reading control. After setting and excluding , the die line is fixed with a screw and inserted into the casting machine. The angle hook also serves as a casting frame for the row. After about ten seconds, the row is poured. The used matrices are "put" back into the type case for a new use (as with manual set) after casting.
The machine can be used to cast normal, italic and mixed lines of text. Centered sentence and exclusion material can also be generated. Font sizes from 4 to 144 points are possible up to a line width of 21 Cicero . The Ludlow line caster was mainly used in the newspaper sector for the typesetting of headlines. The machine was not suitable for producing paragraph text.
To complement the Ludlow caster, there is the Elrod caster, which can be used to produce reglets and lines. Old material such as unusable reglettes or lines that are no longer required can also be used in your casting vessel.
literature
- Sepp Dußler, Fritz Kolling: Modern typesetting . 4th edition. Verlag Documentation Saur KG, Pullach 1974, ISBN 3-7940-8703-8 .
- Richard E. Huss: The Development of Printers' Mechanical Typesetting Methods 1822-1925. University Press, Virginia 1973, ISBN 0-8139-0336-X .
- Günter Schmitt: typesetter. Typographer. A job through the ages . AT Verlag, Aarau 1990, ISBN 3-85502-380-8 .