The English makers Adcock and Shipley produced, over the years, a vast range of engineering equipment including, during the 1950s and 1960s, the remarkable "Universal" that was designed to contain, within a space of only 7 ft. by 3 ft., a number of versatile and accurate machine tools. The machine was designed originally for shipboard use and met the various specification laid down by the British Admiralty for that purpose. It was constructed to be as "shockproof" as possible and was very heavily built and beautifully finished - on a smaller boat this would certainly have been a most useful tool for assisting with general maintenance and repairs. It is rumoured that only 24 were built, with some thought to have gone into submarine support vessels.
Instead of sliding (or elevating) beds and headstocks with multiple and adaptable uses, as on many other machines of the same type, the A & S was built around a conventional centre lathe with each separate machine tool being self powered and capable (apart from the grinder and lathe) of being run at the same time.
The screwcutting lathe was not large, just an 8" swing by 18" capacity between-centres with 8 spindle speeds of 58, 92, 137, 198, 300, 470, 707 and 1020 rpm. It was driven my a 3 HP 1760 rpm 3-phase motor and had a 0.75" hole through the headstock spindle. A simplified gearbox was fitted that offered a range of threads between 4 and 100 tpi - Metric threads were also available, but details of their inclusion into the gearbox, or of the necessary conversion set, are not known. A separate power shaft was used to provide sliding and surfacing feeds, so leaving the leadscrew exclusively for the generation of threads.
The milling machine was of reasonable capacity and ingenious construction, the vertical milling head being built into the horizontal overarm. The working surface of the 6-speed power-driven table was 26" x 6" with a longitudinal travel of 10" and a cross travel of 5.5" whilst the knee could be elevated through a range of 10". The No. 40 international spindle ran at 48 to 970 rpm in horizontal mode and from 77 to 1575 rpm when used vertically.
The drill, with a maximum table capacity of 15" in diameter, was mounted at the back of the lathe "headstock" and had six speeds from 420 to 5000 rpm supplied by a 0.5 hp motor. Unfortunately, the quill was only fitted with a No. 1 Morse taper, so severely restricting its capacity for heavy-duty work.
The universal grinding machine table, which could be swung 45 degrees clockwise and 15 degrees anti-clockwise, was mounted parallel to the lathe bed and used the latter as mount for  its wheel head. Two gears connected the head to controls at the front of the grinding machine. The maximum swing over the table was 7" and the largest job that could be accommodated was 6.5" in diameter and 10" long. For internal grinding the wheel head had to be swivelled through 180 degrees to bring to the front the mounting face for the internal grinding attachment. The maximum diameter that could be ground internally was 4".
For tool and cutter grinding a variety of attachments were available, including a special Universal Cutter Head to mount on the table in place of the standard workhead.
Surface grinding was accomplished by mounting a platform on the standard table and attaching a magnetic chuck to it; an extension was also fitted to the standard wheel head to bring the stone forward and so increase its coverage. The coolant supply to the grinding head was a separate unit, designed to avoid contaminating the other coolant unit with abrasive particles.
Before you rush out to find one of these beautifully-made machines for your 12' x 12' wooden-floored workshop, it is as well to bear in mind that they weigh a not inconsiderable 4000 lbs (1.78 tons) and enjoy little beyond the capacity of machine tools found in the average experimental and model-engineer's workshop.