Advertised during the early 1920s, the Carson 3.5" x 17" precision plain-turning bench lathe was typical of a type long popular for general use in machine and experimental shops associated with precision work involving instruments, optical parts and tool making. At one time Charles Churchill & Co. Ltd., very large distributors and manufacturers of machine tools, were involved in its sale (together with a tool & cutter grinder of the same name) and, with that company's strong American links, it is little surprise that the Carson looked remarkably like a contemporary Cataract. Pointers to their similarity include a housing on the left-hand end of the headstock holding two indexing plungers, the shape of the headstock casting and its bearing housings, a tool tray bolted to the front of the bed beneath the headstock, the bed feet, the tapered profile of the compound slide's rests micrometer dials and the overall profile of the tailstock.
Whether the lathe was made by Cataract or copied is not known, but either possibility is equally likely. The number of US-based makers of precision bench lathes was considerable and included, during the 19th and 20th centuries: Levin, Bottum, American Watch Tool Company, B.C.Ames, Bottum, Hjorth, Potter, Pratt & Whitney, Rivett, Wade, Waltham Machine Works, Wade,  Pratt & Whitney, Rivett, Cataract, Hardinge, Elgin, Remington, Sloan & Chace, W.H.Nichols, Crystal Lake and (though now very rare) Bausch & Lomb, Frederick Pearce, Van Norman, Ballou & Whitcombe, Sawyer Watch Tool Co., Engineering Appliances, Fenn-Sadler, "Cosa Corporation of New York" and UND..

1923 Advertisement for Carson and T.&L.M. precision bench lathes. The notion that amateur model engineers would have been tempted is far fetched, the price would have been well beyond the pocket of all but the very well-healed.