When I started working for newspapers right out of high school, Cadillac had fins, nearly all televisions were black and white, and newspapers were “hot metal.” I admit I’m nostalgic about hot metal and the Linotype. Although the Linotype was highly versatile and was used for setting both type and headlines, the larger heads — those three columns wide and longer — were set by hand on a Ludlow typograph.The Ludlow was described as “a semi-mechanical composing machine.” The Ludlow had a casting unit, but without the keyboard that was a feature of the Linotype. The ones at the Texarkana Gazette had cabinets with cases holding the matrices of the various fonts and izes, spaces, breakers and the casting machines. On weekends, when the honchos were gone, the guys in the composing room would teach me how to do all of the work back there, something that I thoroughly enjoyed. In addition to obtaining a rudimentary knowledge of the Linotype, I also learned to operate the Ludlow. The matrices are placed by hand in the stick and after the headline is cast, they are replaced in the case. The interesting thing about the Ludlow headliner was if the head was more than four columns wide, you had to set it in two sections, with a breaker between the two.If you forgot the breaker, then the molten lead would not only fill the mold, itd shoot out a slot in the front of the machine, which was where the operator would be standing. On one Saturday night, I had gotten my pages dummied, so I went back to the composing room to build the pages — the wheeled tables that the forms were on were called turtles, and the ingots of lead were called pigs, but no one seemed to know why — and I had to use the Ludlow for some headlines. On one five-column head, I forgot to put in the space bar and remembered just as I head the lever to shoot the molten lead into the mold for casting. Just as the lever clicked, I remembered. No matador has ever spun as quickly to avoid a bull’s horns as I did in avoiding the molten lead. I had just gotten out of the way when I saw a stream of hot metal shooting out of the front of the Ludlow. If I hadnt moved when I did, not only would my pants have been ruined by the hot lead, there is a good chance I would have started singing soprano.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 23:07:30 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015