My machine also has US gov't tags on it, one in the open and the other part covered by a Pennsylvania vo-tech school tag; part of me wants to peel the vo-tech tag off to check out the US details underneath but part of me wants to leave the vo-tech-chapter evidence in place; I find it interesting to consider what specific past lives- and the human lives that interacted with them- go with a given machine. Somewhere I read that the main market for the 1R3s had been for the Navy but I cannot find my way back to that. I suppose that might fit with the moderately long duration but slow-volume production.
My machine's tag references Van Norman being part of a larger corporation then-known as Universal American
I have sort of traced this out as a loose history of VN as relates to our late-chapter machines
Apparently way back the predecessor company was Waltham Watch Tool company and one of their products was small lathes
Van Norman Machine Tool Co. - History | VintageMachinery.org
VN seems to have come into existence as a distinct company in the very early 1900s.
At some point, some sources seem to indicate that VN got bought up and became part of Universal American Corporation, with one source listing that as happening in 1964
https://www.davistownmuseum.org/bioMorseTwist.html
That also seems confirmed, with less specificity on the date, here:
Universal American Corporation [WorldCat Identities]
and with other potential information about U.A. perhaps available here, if one could get the periodical without an on-site visit (which may be possible, I don't know and haven't yet checked):
New York Public Library Web Server 1 /All Locations
And then it looks like not too many years later, Universal American got swallowed up into Gulf & Western (a/k/a, per Mel Brooks' 1970s 'Silent Movie,' Engulf & Devour)
GULF and amp - WESTERN TO TRY NEW FIELD - Will Buy Block of Universal American Merger Ahead COMPANIES PLAN MERGER ACTIONS - Article - NYTimes.com
All signs are that during the 1960s and '70s, G&W bought up all sorts of companies in all sorts of industries in which it had no depth of background, and probably did nothing at all in the way of R&D or a vision for the future of a company as specialized as VN; they sound like prototypical corporate raiders of the "greed is good" ilk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_and_Western_Industries
Signs are that Ex-cell-o, of which Atlantic was apparently a subsidiary or a marketing sub-name, bought the tattered remnants of the VN machine tool business, maybe just the remaining inventory, in the mid-1970s; see the info at the post by JacobS of 11-03-2009, 11:25 AM, here (part way through the entire discussion)
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/v...ron/atlantic-van-norman-1rq-mill-ebay-191361/
Unfortunately, this seems to have been the group trajectory of more than a few precision US manufacturers during the 1960s and 70s;
https://www.amazon.com/When-Machine-Stopped-Cautionary-Industrial/dp/0875842089 (I've read some fascinating online excerpts, though not the whole book)
Here in Vermont, where I live, there was a huge, thriving, and distinguished precision machine tool industry of many companies in Springfield and Windsor (so much so that it was considered the 7th most at risk enemy target during WWII
http://www.springfieldvt.com/history-c10d8 ). In fact that area was (among some still is) known as 'Precision Valley' and was quite literally the cradle of modern and precision manufacture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Precision_Museum . But due to some of the same sorts of shortsighted corporate engulfments followed by demise and collapse, it is a hollow shell of what it was; the average citizen of today doesn't even know that it was once there.
I have strong views on that sort of thing; it takes the most remarkable dynamism of ingenuity and work ethic and livelihoods and communities and strip mines it into total ruin, under the helm of people who offer the abilities, roots of, and loyalty to none of those things; it's almost like slow motion treason, only maybe propelled by selfish cluelessness instead of deliberate intent to sabotage.