Looking to have been made during the late 1930s into the 1940s, the LAP lathe is not a machine known in the UK.
With a centre height of perhaps 150 mm, taking around 700 mm between centres and with a large open gap in the V and flat-way bed, from its design and the writing on the speed charts the LAP appears to have been French in origin.
A common feature at the time, not only on better-quality European toolroom lathes but also on more modestly-priced 'workshop' lathes, was a drive system consisting of a spindle-speed-change gearbox inside the headstock-end plinth. Driven by a motor mounted beneath it, the box had two levers with which to change speeds, the drive then passing up to the headstock spindle by a single V-belt. A third lever, mounted on the front face of the headstock, engaged backgear by which means a range of slow speeds was obtained - the full range being eight speeds from 30 to 1450 r.p.m. This arrangement - of a remote speed-change gearbox - was intended to reduce vibrations associated with meshing gears from being transmitted to the workpiece and was Screwcutting was by a Norton-type quick-change tumbler-selector gearbox, its screwcutting chart hinting that supplied with the lathe would have been a 127t transposing changewheel to generate English inch pitches. Oddly, the drive to the carriage was by just a leadscrew - instead of a leadscrew and power shaft - the former being slotted and carrying a key that turned a worm-and-wheel assembly inside the apron to provide the sliding and surfacing power feeds.
Ordinary cross and top slides were fitted, the covered feed screws having common-for-the-time micrometer dials of small diameter.
If you have a lathe or any other machine tool by LAP, or any literature about them, the writer would be interested to know.