Made by Valentin Fils of 63 Avenue de Choisy, Paris  - a maker of wood and metal-working machine tools - the company's only known surviving product (at the time of writing) is this simple but very heavily-built wood-turning lathe. Manufactured in the early years of the 20th century the lathe had a 200 mm centre height, a capacity between centres of 800 mm and, when found, was being driven from a 3-phase motor by a 3-step pulley direct to the headstock. At 150 mm high and 212 mm wide the bed was, for a wood lathe, enormously strong and carried on stout cast-iron legs. A compound slide rest, useful for precision wood turning and light-duty metal work, was carried on a slotted bracket and bolted down in place of the standard T-rest. With a 40 mm diameter and 4 mm pitch the thread on the spindle nose was relatively fine - though no Morse tapers were used in headstock or tailstock, the centres being secured by bolts of 16 mm diameter x 2 mm pitch.
If you have a Valentin lathe or machine tool of any type  the writer would be very interested to hear from you.