The "10-inch" South Bend lathe was the first model marketed by the O'Brian twins of South Bend, Indiana, and introduced during 1906. Backgeared and screwcutting, it was offered as both a line-shaft driven machine (like this one shown below) and with foot-drive - this having the required different legs and the necessary flywheel and treadle gear. For its day, lathe was utterly conventional; it employed bronze headstock bearings, a 3-step flat-belt drive to the headstock and only the most perfunctory of micrometer scales engraved on the cross-feed screw handle. However, it was well made, with a wide, V-way bed, a rack-and-pinion drive to the carriage and good-sized clasp nuts on the leadscrew--though the latter ran in bearings retained by what look (to modern eyes) to have been feeble, slot-headed machine screws.
Like most lathes of the time it was not fitted with protective guards over the gears or belt runs, workers being considered responsible for their own safety - though it is known that such a sort-sighted outlook look left many skilled men maimed and unable to earn a living.
The example below was taken home during 2005 by a demolition worker from an abandoned junk yard in New Jersey. Unfortunately, the lathe had been tipped over onto its front and many parts were broken, bent, damaged or missing. However, thanks to eBay, the lathe passed into the hands of the gifted Dennis Turk, who undertook his usual meticulous, time-consuming and deeply researched style of  restoration back to original. 
Dennis writes:
By evaluating the wear on the machine we think the accident happened over 75 years ago, with the lathe never having been subsequently repaired. The damage was considerable and included: a missing tailstock and changewheels; a damaged changewheel bracket, broken and missing elements of the cross-slide screw assembly; a chunk of cast iron broken off the top slide; a smashed carriage handwheel and bent shaft - and a cracked leadscrew mount under the headstock with part of the casting missing. Because, at the time, this was the known example of such an early model, the prospect of obtaining parts and repairing the rest was daunting. However, as luck would have it, parts for a very similar 1914 model showed up on eBay and I was able to obtain the tailstock, an end-gear bracket (complete with all the changewheels), a steady rest and a faceplate. The cross slide lead screw was fabricated as per the original and a replacement handle found for it.  The lathe then went though and extensive restoration and now is a fully-functional machine. 
Early machine tools (at least the smaller ones) were not painted but coated with "japanning".  This old-fashioned finish (obtained from the Japanese in the 1700s), is difficult to reproduce today and, rather than attempt the genuine article, it was decided to replicate the deep shine of the original by using a mix of Rustolium gloss and semi-gloss paint. The castings were given many coats, with each carefully sanded down, until that special "gleam" was obtained to closely match the ex-factory finish.
By 1910, when this lathe was built, South Bend Lathe had added a 12-inch foot and line-shaft powered lathes as well as line-shaft 13 and 15-inch models.  It was not until January of 1910 that South Bend began using serial numbers, beginning with "700" - which leads one to assume that around six or seven hundred lathes had already been constructed.  The example below is number 849, or perhaps the 149^th lathe built in 1910.  There is only one older example of a South Bend lathe currently known (in 2007) a 12-inch foot-powered lathe owned by Ray Ferguson in Alabama carrying the number 727. Although we know of no very early South Bend lathes without serial numbers one or more must be out there, somewhere ……...
South Bend also sold lathes to Sears Roebuck from 1910 until the late 1920s.  These lathes were marketed using the  "Expert" brand name and were well represented in the Sears mail-order catalogs.