Manufactured by a branch of the EMI Organisation the MEC Sprint single-spindle capstan lathes were described as P.S.C machines i.e. Program Sequence Controlled. The result of a three-year development programme during the early 1970s, by late in that decade some 10,00 examples where is use worldwide. Like many such "automatic" machines from that era, control was by plug boards, an essentially simple system that allowed relatively inexperience operators to work the machines.