Although the background to the T.N.C. Company is not known the lathe was either imported from the United Kingdon or built under licence as a replica of the Super Adept. Only the most minor differences between the machines can be found: a straight instead of waisted carriage-feed handle; a top slide whose base casting was modified at the rear with a curved slot - the purpose of which was to improve the ease of setting over. It is just possible that the lathe was an early product of Hercus, with the name acting as a suitable disguise. Certainly, as yet, no advertising literature has been discovered for the machine and it may well have been distributed around local tool dealers "by hand" - as a convenient way of starting off what was to become a very successful machine-tool manufacturing business.   Fred Portass produced a modified Adept for the department store Gamages.  This was identical save for cosmetic changes to the bed casting.  Other pseudo-Adepts seem to have been produced.