In their early days, from 1870 to 1890, the Hendey Company were better known for their range of powerful and well-designed shapers, rather than lathes. By 1874/5 the factory had started production of a new design of (patented) friction-drive hand and powered shapers and planers - all of which won awards in the popular trade exhibitions of the time - and their success was sealed in 1878 when one of the machines, a powered friction shaper, was adopted by the US Naval Board as the standard machine to be used throughout the service. The "Friction" planer was so named because of its drive system, which incorporated a cast-iron clutch between the two pulleys to provided instantly selectable forward and reverse motions. Like many early machine tools, reverse was obtained very simply by taking both belts from a common countershaft, but "crossing over" that which was to drive the reverse pulley.  As the ram on a shaper - or the table on a planer - reached the end of its set travel, it tripped stops (or "dogs") which acted on the clutch and caused it to pick up the drive from the appropriate pulley.
The shapers on this page all date from a time in the late 1800s and early 1900s when this type of machine, with its cheap tooling (in comparison with a milling machine) and relative ease of setting up, was very popular.