Still existing as a general engineering company - http://progressing.no/om-oss - Progress-Oslo started life during 1903 and manufactured a range of machine tools including lathes, millers, shapers and other equipment and accessories for both shipboard use and Norwegian industry. By the 1950s the firm had moved away from the production of machines to concentrated on the manufacture of gears and then, finally, propulsion units for boats and small ships. Today Progressing has become one of the leading suppliers of components to the Norwegian marine industry.
The one Progress-Oslo lathe so far discovered has a centre height of around 200 mm and takes 2000 mm between centres. Typical of the industrial-class geared-head lathes made during the late 1930s and early 1940s, it has an open "box-type" headstock with changes of spindle speed by the juxtaposition of two levers mounted on a common axis. A Norton-type quick-change screwcutting and feeds' gearbox was almost certainly a standard fitting on this model, its drive coming from a train of changewheels that passed through an externally-mounted tumble-reverse assembly. The usual leadscrew provided the threading feed while a separate power shaft was provided to drive the sliding and surfacing feeds.
Machined with flat and V ways, the bed had a short, permanent gap in front of the headstock with the heavily offset saddle wings arranged with a pair of T-slots on the right, the left pair being short to allow the cutting tool to reach right up to the screwed spindle nose. Although of conventional layout, the compound slide rest was unusual in one aspect, the cross-slide gip strip being on the front left-hand (thrust side) instead of on the right. For a large lathe the feed-screw micrometer dials were hopelessly small - and some turners might have found the "balanced" handles (certainly that on the cross slide) rather hard on their hands.
If you have a Progress-Oslo machine tool of any kind, knowledge of the company or copies of sales or technical literature, the writer would be pleased to hear from you..