In 1950 Walter Davidson Urwick, a foundry owner and engineer from Taplow in Buckinghamshire, England, applied for a patent on a triangular gib key used to hold a quill in angular position. Urwick claimed that remarkable accuracy could be achieved with his simple idea.
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| Image from patent GB-696,773 |
The patent was granted in 1953 and at about the same time a benchtop combination machine designed by Urwick, and using his patented gib, was announced by Samuel Jenkins of Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England. This machine incorporated lathe, milling machine and boring machine. The Impetus-Metalmaster Universal Machine Tool was introduced but for unknown reasons manufacturing never really got rolling and only about a dozen examples were made. A pair of pages on the lathes.co.uk website provide a great deal of information as well as photos: Impetus/Metalmaster page 1, Impetus/Metalmaster page 2.