Product Description

Ludlow Typograph Company (founded 1906, headquartered Chicago, Illinois) manufactured the Ludlow — the dominant U.S. casting machine for display type, the large-size headline and advertising type used in newspapers, magazines, and commercial printing. The Ludlow was complementary to the Linotype and Intertype machines that cast text-size type: composing rooms typically operated Ludlows for headlines and Linotypes for body copy on the same floor.

The Ludlow casting principle relied on the same continuously-heated lead pot — running at approximately 550°F — that defined the Linotype, with the same family of asbestos-containing materials specified for the heated chamber:

  • Block insulation around the lead-melting pot
  • Pot-cover gaskets
  • Electrical wire insulation on heating-element wiring
  • Asbestos packing on hot-metal handling components

Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation that Ludlow Typograph specified asbestos-containing insulation and gasket materials for the machines and shipped replacement asbestos products as service parts through the documented era.

Ludlow Typograph Company has been named as a Manufacturer Defendant in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation.

Workers Exposed

  • Ludlow operators (display-type setters) — full-shift proximity to heated pot
  • Composing-room machinists — pot service, gasket repacking, heater rewire
  • ITU members in newspaper and commercial-print composing rooms