Built by one of the less-well-known Swiss makers,  Christen & Company of Berne, the DAN 5.75" x  20" or 30" (145 mm x 500 mm or 750 mm) "Model 44" precision lathe was a finely made machine tool. Christen was a organisation better known in the 1950s and 1960s, for their Deckel-like precision universal milling machine and, in later years, for their beautiful tool and cutter grinders and, in the Although introduced towards the end of World War Two, in 1944, the lathe was a development of a model first seen around 1929 and, like all Swiss machine-tools, was both a thoroughly well thought-out design and of exemplary quality. Over a thousand examples of the earlier model were built but, at the moment, little is known of how well the "44" fared - however, from the writer's conversations with engineers trying to obtain deliveries of machine tools in the immediate post war decade (with delivery times sometimes stretching beyond two years) there can be little doubt that it would have been a success.
The clean-lined headstock carried a 7/8" (22 mm) bore spindle that ran in a long tapered bronze bearing at the chuck end and a pair of roller races at the rear - through which it was free to slide axially as it warmed up. To prevent the drive belt from transmitting vibrations into the spindle, or interfering with its accuracy, the single flat pulley spun in its own ball races with the drive taken through a peg and slot arrangement. The wide flat belt ran through a sealed compartment to prevent contamination from the oil-bath that lubricated a double-sliding 3-speed gear arrangement that gave, when combined with a foot-braked 4-speed electric motor (mounted on an adjustable plate within the headstock cabinet leg), a total of 12 speeds stretching from 45 to 1800 rpm. Unfortunately, instead of a simple threaded or industry-standard nose on the end of the spindle the makers chose to sacrifice both simplicity and owner convenience by using a design exclusive to themselves where a conical section and key were used to secure chucks, faceplates and other attachments. 
Looking particularly massive for so small a lathe the unusual "double-height" box-ribbed bed sat on two cast-iron plinths with the right hand unit housing the coolant tank and pump. The main carriage V-ways were set low down on the front and rear faces of the bed with the tailstock running along a V and a flat formed on the top surface. Full-length covers were fitted over the ways that, whilst not completely effective, did afford some protection from chips and turnings falling on the finely-machined surfaces. Although the low-set carriage ways ran right up to the headstock the bed's top surface stopped short of the headstock - and so allowed a usefully large gap to be formed without recourse to a removable section and its attendant deterioration in stiffness; this arrangement also had the advantage of ensuring that the carriage was always fully supported even when right up against the faceplate. The carriage assembly was a particularly fine piece of work with a deep, double-wall apron that allowed all gears to be mounted on shafts that were supported at both ends. Power sliding and surfacing was provided by a separate power shaft and engaged and disengaged by a vertical-action lever that protruded from the middle of the apron's lower edge; the design of the mechanism (like the similar system fitted to the Harrison L Series lathes) ensured that even under the heaviest of cuts the feeds could be flicked into and out of engagement with the lightest of touches. As a further aid to safety and operator confidence an automatic trip was provided for the longitudinal feed that was adjustable by a simple screw to vary the disengagement point by as little 0.0004". Electrical control of the spindle was also centred on the apron with a start-stop-forward-reverse lever pivoted from the right-hand apron wall and working through a long control rod; a master motor switch was also fitted on the front face of the headstock-end plinth. The rear of the cross slide was raised and provided with a T slot that could hold a rear toolpost (together with its raiser block) and also act as a mounting point for the extension necessary to couple with the (optional-extra) taper-turning unit. A 4-way indexing toolpost was fitted as standard and the compound slide micrometer dials were (especially for their era) of an unusually generous diameter; finished in satin chrome they were available with either metric or English graduations.
Divided into two sections, each with its own oil bath, the screwcutting gearbox held hardened gears and was driven through the usual train of changewheels from spur gears (in  their own oil bath) mounted inboard of the left-hand end of the spindle. Although the changewheels ran on studs from which they could be quickly detached (by the use of a simple slotted-washer arrangement) the gear-guard cover had to be unbolted and lifted off instead of hinging open. As standard the box was able to generate 37 inch, 39 metric and 21 module pitches and was controlled through the usual method of a sliding tumbler combined with lever-operated rotary controls. Both the ground-finish, high precision, ball-bearing bushed leadscrew (and the power shaft) could be set to rotate in either direction (or be isolated) by a form of tumble reverse built into the headstock. 38 power sliding and surfacing feeds were provided that, for each evolution of the spindle, gave rates of 0.001" (0.0254 mm) to 0.04" (1.016 mm) and  0.0005" (0.0127 mm) to 0.02" (0.508 mm) respectively.
The shorter-bed lathe was  66.5-inches (1689 mm) long and weighed approximately 1475 lbs (669 kg) whilst the longer bed version was 9.5-inches (241 mm) longer and tipped the scales at 1520 lbs. (689 kg).
Additional pictures of the Dan lathe can be seen here.