Now resident in America, this Goyen was built during 1873/4 to the order of a Mr. Shuter of London, then a member of the Amateur Mechanical Society. Complete with its extensive extra equipment it was invoiced at over £1600 - a figure that, if corrected to 2015 values, would have been - using the retail price index - equal to £128,000. However, using instead the "wage or income worth" of £1600, this would amount to a rather more startling £808,000….
After Shuter's death the Goyen passed to his son, Alfred and, after his demise to Eustace Watson of Esher in Surry and then to a Brigadier Wood. At this point the lathe returned to near its home, being sold to a Mr. Cattell of Marldon, in Devon, who in turn disposed of it, still with an amount of original paperwork, early photographs, screwcutting and geometric chuck charts and other items of historic interest to a Mr Rubendunst.
Over the years the lathe has been somewhat added to and modified with, fortunately, around 15 mechanical drawings detailing the alterations drawn on the rear of sections of old but undated blueprints. One obvious modification concerns the apron where, by the addition of a plate covering the right-hand half of its front face, room was made to include a geared-down drive to the bed rack. The handwheel fitted is almost certainly not original, a crank handle been the most likely original fitting. Another major addition (fortunately reversible) was a plate mounted across the tailstock end of the bed that carried a set of gears connected to a "power shaft" mounted to the rear of the bed. This not uncommon practice of the 1800s allowed power cross feed to be fitted, together with an extreme ratio reduction between spindle and front leadscrew for the development of very fine screw pitches or rates of carriage feed.
At the bottom of this page are photographs of what might be the same lathe returned to a more original specification - though as yet this cannot be confirmed.