Looking almost unchanged twenty years later - although by then available with a fully-geared headstock and integrated drive system - the Rockford Economy lathes of 1920 displayed a number of well-established centre-lathe features (developed during the late 1800s) that would stay with conventional workshop lathes until present times. The bed was deep, well braced and of uniform section (a design that did not, at the time, apply universally); the headstock was heavily constructed with robust, double-bolt bearing caps and a half-height front wall for additional stiffening; screwcutting was through a Norton quick-change gearbox with alternative settings for threads and fine feeds; a separate powershaft took drive to the double-walled, oil-sump apron; sliding and surfacing feeds were selected and engaged independently with separate (safety) wind in-and-out clutches; the compound slide rest had zeroing micrometer dials of a (just) tolerable diameter and the tailstock was robust enough to cope with the demands of day-to-day work and with a Morse taper suited to its load capacity.
It says much for the design that, simply by adding a geared headstock, flick-in-and-out feed controls on the apron and an enclosed, plinth-mounted motor to drive the headstock input pulley by V belts, the lathe was able to stay largely up-to-date even into the 1940s.