Yet one more previously unknown lathe of French origin to emerge in recent years - this example carrying a plate proclaiming that the selling dealer was MOM, a company based in Lille, a former industrial city in northern France.
The Teyssou brothers were based in Stade de France, Paris, Daint Denis with, apparently, a connection to a machine tool dealer, Roy Frères, in Lyon Saint Etienne. It might be that the lathe was commissioned from a Czechoslovakian maker - perhaps Skoda or TOS - with the easily-change headstock-end foot made in France.
Of entirely conventional arrangement and typical of its time - circa 1925 to 1939 -  the lathe enjoys a decent mechanical specification and might have been built in the 1920s or 1930s. With a centre height of around 4.9 inches (125 mm) and taking perhaps 29 inches (750 mm) between centres it has a Norton-type, quick-change screwcutting gearbox. Connected to the spindle through a tumble-reverse assembly, the box gives 21 different pitches, a three-position lever at the top of the box multiplying the seven positions of the front tumble lever. Should the proper Norton "flip-over" high-low-ratio gear be fitted to the input shaft of the box, feeds would be divided into 21 "coarse" for screwcutting and 21 "fine" for feeds. A separate power shaft is fitted to drive the sliding and surfacing feeds, this being engaged as needed by a sliding dog clutch - a second lever on top of the screwcutting gearbox perhaps being used to engage the leadscrew.
Drive to the spindle is by what must be the maker's built-on, hinged-for-belt-tension adjustment countershaft. The drive from the motor to the upper pulley is by V-belt and the final by a wide, flat belt. If this is an original fitting, the lathe must have been made after 1930 when V-belts of the modern type were first fitted to small machine tools.
Fitted with equal-length arms to the left and tight of the cross slide, the saddle is able to pass, on the V and flat ways of the bed, past the front face of the headstock - so allowing a fully-supported cutting tool to reach right up to the spindle nose.
A second example of the lathe is shown at the bottom of the page
Si vous connaissez les tours MOM, l'auteur serait heureux d'avoir de vos nouvelles