Bernhard Gläss lathes were manufactured in Chemnitz, Germany - an area famous for its many machine-tool makers of whom the largest and best-known before WW2 were Wanderer, Reinecker, Biernatzki and Pfauter. Marketed exclusively through the Schuchardt & Schütte organisation, Gläss built a wide range of lathes including conventional bed types with centres heights up to 600 mm and large facing models, on bed plates, able to mount massive faceplates and chucks up to 3000 mm in diameter. Other machines were also built, including specialised oil-grooving equipment, but after WW2 the company disappeared, having been absorbed into the nationalised WMW organisation inside the communist-controlled German Democratic Republic.
The ZGp and ZGq lathes, from around 1910 to 1925, were typical of the company's products in the early years of the 20th century and were made in an unusually  wide variety of sizes: centre heights ranged from 155 through 180, 210, 235, 260, 285, 325, 400 and 450 mm and between-centres capacities could be had as 500, 800, 1000, 15000, 2000, 2500, 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000, 7000 and 8000 mm. Weights spanned a considerable 620 to 9650 kg with, naturally enough, appropriately wider beds and stronger stands for the bigger machines..