Founded by the former president of Whitcomb-Blaisdell Machine Tool Co. around 1910, the Worcester Lathe Company was based, along with many other machine-tool makers, in the state of Massachusetts . A range of regular engine-type machines was made, in both backgeared, flat-belt drive and geared-head versions, with production probably ceasing in the early 1920s.
Rather oddly, some examples have been found with ways comprising a pair of Vs and flats (the example on this page) while others had four Vs (the example in blue, below) - in each case, of course, the carriage running on one pair and the tailstock the other. While early models appear to have had changewheels for screwcutting with an auxiliary flat-belt drive to the leadscrew, most examples discovered have a simple screwcutting gearbox that gave just three rates of feed for each setting of the changewheels - selection being by a lever sliding horizontally in a slot marked "1", "2" and "3". While a rather poor reproduction of an early catalogue shows the two 12 and 14-inch standard and toolroom lathes with the simple 3-speed box, a late advertisement, from 1921, includes a picture of a lathe fitted with a full quick-change box.
Although remote ceiling and wall-mounted countershafts would have been offered, at least one late-model could be had with a drive system consisting of a motor carried on a plate between the legs of the headstock-end support, its clutch operated by a full-length bar strung above a line between the headstock and tailstock.
Tim Chock from the USA add the following interesting information:
Tony, I came across a lathe badged as made by "Worcester Machine Tool Co." I find that the headstock and tailstock castings, the spring clamp arrangement of the tumbler reversing lever, the lead-screw-plus-sliding-feed-shaft setup, and the presence of double inverted-vee ways to be continuations of the designs produced by the P. Blaisdell firm. Keith Rucker's Vintage Machinery archive has photos of such a Blaisdell lathe which clearly show the inner, tailstock ways and the outer, saddle ways just the same as those on the blue Worcester Lathe Co. machine on your site. The listing of the lathe described a 12" swing with 30" between centers and the apron is the same design shown in the P. Blaisdell 1893 general catalog from VM, though the older, hinged cross slide with elevation crank in back seems not to have survived long into the new century.
http://www.vintagemachinery.org/photoindex/detail.aspx?id=39747
The merger of the Blaisdell range of drill presses and lathes, large Whitcomb lathes and planers, and Draper planers and lathes into the Whitcomb-Blaisdell Machine Tool Co. occurred in 1905. For some reason the entity called Worcester Machine Tool Co. was created at the same address at 134 Gold Street and this firm produced the lathe in today's listing using up existing Blaisdell parts. This seems to have been a transitional phase such that, ten years on, all the castings on these models had been revised to bear no resemblance to the Blaisdell designs of the late 19th century and the novel innovations of the tool-free gear change and 1-2-3 feed switch came into being. By this time the drills and planers had apparently been dropped and Worcester Machine Tool became simply Worcester Lathe Co. Another layer of confusion at 134 Gold St. arises from the fact that some of these were private-labeled under such names as R.L. Meisenheimer.