In production by 1948 and originally marketed as the "Astoba UW1" and carrying a badge engraved: "ASTOBA A.STOECKLE Machines-Outils BALE SUISSE" the Astoba name appears to have been coined from the name of the manufacturer and the town - "ASTO + BA". With a design that managed to combine both simplicity and astounding ingenuity the Astoba was beautifully-made and, as the UW-1, further developed by Messrs. Meyer & Burger in Steffisburg, Bern, Switzerland. It found a ready market world-wide in experimental workshops, boats and other locations where, with limited room, one precision machine tool was called upon to perform several tasks. In the mid to late 1980s manufacturing rights were transferred to Messrs. Richard, Murgenthal who in turn passed them on to Messrs. H. Urben A.G.
Available in two models, The "K" and "S" the former was a standard bed-length version (12.6" between centres) and the latter a long bed (16.5" between centres). When arranged as a screwcutting lathe, with the tailstock in place, the centre height was 4.3" but, because the headstock could be raised and lowered, it was immediately adaptable as a facing lathe to turn material up to 16.6" in diameter, a facility helped in no small part by the enormous length of the cross slide's travel. Helped by a large spring concealed within a tube beneath the bed the machine could be moved from horizontal to vertical and back again with relative ease and, aided by various accessories (including power feed to the table), converted into a backgeared screwcutting centre lathe, facing lathe, horizontal borer, drill, horizontal miller, vertical miller, surface grinder and a slotter. Other accessories (although not always mentioned in the sales literature) included a heavy duty drill (1-inch maximum capacity) a power hacksaw; circular and jig saws for use on wood and a flexible drive take-off from the motor that could be coupled to a toolpost-mounted high-speed grinding and milling spindle.  Supplied with new machines was a large wall chart showing how the 15 set-ups could be arranged. A two-speed motor and drive system provided 16 speeds that gave an enormously useful range from 75 and 4000 rpm (the latter fast enough to let the makers offer equipment for horizontal and cylindrical grinding) whilst the optional backgear assembly reduced the lowest speed to a useful 23 rpm for screwcutting and facing work. With a  very deep speed range the lathe could cope successfully with the largest facing jobs it was possible to mount as well as undertake the turning of very mall diameters and fine drilling. Running in precision taper roller bearings the spindle was fitted for the now hard-to-find and unusual P type 22mm collets with an internal rather than external thread and a draw bar for retention. Although the height of the headstock could be varied that of the tailstock was fixed at 110 mm (though a 100 mm raiser block was listed) and carried a No. 1 (optionally No. 2 ) Morse taper barrel.
A number of useful milling tables was offered including a swivel right-angle type (on an adaptor base) and a fully compound swivelling type (as often found on Deckel FP1-type millers) that could be angled in any combination of movements left to right and forwards and backwards.
Being of Swiss manufacture the lathe was not only made from the finest quality material but built to the very highest standards and given a superb cosmetic finish. For an interesting comparison see the following combination machines: 
Adcock & Shipley, Dalton,  Dainichi, Hommel, Kitchen & Wade, Kneller, Labormil, Leinweber, Metalmaster (Impetus), Murad Bormilathe, Rindis, Sacia and Siome.
An experienced Astoba user reports: I first used the machine when an 18-year old apprentice and was very taken by its silky-smooth motions, dependable repeatability and the rapidity in reconfiguring the set-ups. However, some 70% of the 10-minute change-over time had to be devoted to ensuring that all the ground slides were meticulous cleaned to ensure that they mated without damage. Once having used an ASTOBA one '' just knows '' there are no serious competitors. There is simply no need to survey the market. It's interesting to note that the physically much bigger THIEL 58 has, functionally, only slightly larger movements and capacity; for example: longitudinal table movement 12.0" versus 10.5";  spindle nose to table the same; ram movement 6.5" versus 6.0" - a comparison of each machine's bulk does not indicate this closeness of movement availability. Of course, on heavy milling jobs with high rates of metal removal, the Thiel would be superior but for more delicate toolroom tasks the Astoba really is astonishingly versatile.