Ludlow Typograph - Ludlow Typograph Co.

Ludlow Typograph Co.

The Ludlow Typograph Company was the manufacturer of the device. It was founded in 1906 by the machine's inventor, William I. Ludlow, and machinist William A. Reade to manufacture a simpler, cheaper version of the Linotype. This, however, proved impractical, and so an even simpler typecasting system, the typograph described above, was devised. Manufacturing began in Chicago in 1912 and by 1919 Typographs were in service in over 350 printing offices. In 1920 the company bought out the Elrod Slug Casting Co., of Omaha.

Competition in large format line-casters came from Mergenthaler Linotype with its APL (All-Purpose Linotype), Lanston Monotype which sold the Italian Nebitype hand-set caster, and Intertype, which offered a "Composing Stick Attachment" that allowed their caster to be used to cast headlines up to 60 points. None of these competing systems achieved much success, however, and the typical job shop of the letterpress era usually had both a line-caster for text, and a Ludlow for casting headlines.

Ludlow faces were proprietary and the principal typographer at Ludlow was R. Hunter Middleton, creator of several notable font designs, including Coronet, Stencil, Delphian Open Title, Eusebius, Flair, Radiant (typeface), Record Gothic, Stellar, Tempo, Umbra and many others. Other noted designers for Ludlow included Robert Wiebking, Douglas Crawford McMurtrie who served as director of advertising and typography before Middleton, and Hermann Zapf, whose Optima and Palatino were among the last faces cut for Ludlow.

Despite the rapid decline of letterpress printing in the 1960s, Ludlow continued in operation at least through the mid-1980s, because Ludlow matrices can also be used by rubber stamp manufacturers. In the early 1980s, the company claimed that 16,000 Ludlows were in operation throughout the world.