The first lathe known to have been branded as a "Toyo" - and made by the Japanese Sakai Special Camera Mfg. Co. Ltd., - was the delightful and cleverly-engineered precision ML1. The lathe, with overall dimensions of 590 mm long, 260 mm wide, 175 mm high and with a weight of 15 kg, was designed and developed by Mr. Sakai during the early 1950s - originally not as a commercial proposition,, but to help with production of his large-format box cameras. However, so successful did the lathe prove (and, with so few machine tools of the type available in Japan at the time) that it found a ready home market followed by strong overseas sales - where the competitive price undercut similar machines from Germany (Lorch and Boley Leinen)  and America (Levin and Derbyshire).
With a 50 mm centre height and a capacity between centres of 250 mm the lathe was ideal for watch, clock and instrument work and was unusual for its time in having (like the late-model Boley F1 lathes of a similar size) a tightly integrated drive system. Whilst the Boley was based on established watchmaker's design, and fitted with specialist equipment for turning and boring pivots, Toyo used drive system very similar to that on the 1954 Emco "Unimat" with a rear-mounted 100/240V 50/60 HZ 145W motor (with neat, built-in switch gear) driving either the spindle or via a speed-reducing intermediate pulley to give a single slow speed of 250 r.p.m. (from the intermediate pulley) and three high of 1000, 2000 and 3000 r.p.m. driven directly. Running on precision ball races the spindle was bored through to clear 12 mm and carried an unusual  size of Morse taper in the nose - a 1.5. As the spindle was threaded to take chucks and backplates a simple type of screw-on compression collet holder was offered that took standard dead-length collets in metric-only sizes of: 2, 2.5, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10 mm bore..
With "vertical" square-section ways on both the front and rear faces of the bed supporting the double-apron carriage the lathe was, for its size, unique in design - though the hand-built Rolls-Royce precision lathe of 1948 used a similar system. Unfortunately only a cross slide was fitted, with two T-slots and a simple, single tool holder - and seemingly without the option of a proper compound-slide assembly. Although the cross slide travel was with a useful 65 mm the makers neglected to increase this (and thus make it more useful when a milling slide was fitted), by the simple expedient of using a cantilevered feed-screw support bracket instead of the simple flat-plate type fitted.
Unlike most contemporary precision lathes of its size and type, that tended to use just a simple bolt-on compound slide assembly, the ML1 was able to drive its saddle along the bed not only with a handwheel but also under power through a train of gears connected to a leadscrew the ran down the centre line of the bed - although the tiny American ManSon hobby lathe managed the same feat on an even smaller scale. Because the leadscrew nut could not be disengaged a handwheel was also provided, at the tailstock end of the bed, which by much twirling could return carriage to its starting point. The gear set was an option, and mounted  on an outrigger plate, fastened to the outer face of a dog-clutch assembly fitted to the end of the leadscrew. The set was able to generate pitches of 0.25, 0.3, 0.35, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.75, 0,8, 0.9, 1.0, 1.25 and 1.5 mm but the very high bottom speed of 250 r.p.m. would rather have rather mitigated against its successful use, though in mitigation it must be said that the surface finish of the very small diameter threads likely to be generated would have benefited from such revolutions. The gears could also be arranged in various compound settings, to give different rates of sliding feed, and were contained in their own housing to prevent lubricant splashing onto the drive belts, or contaminating the operator's hands as he changed speeds.
With the leadscrew passing down the centre of the bed the carriage attachment point was arranged to be directly under the toolpost, so ensuring as near a straight-line pull as possible - rather in the manner of, amongst others, the Boley L Series lathes
Of conventional design - but with guidance ways at both front and rear - the No. 1 Morse taper tailstock had a 30-mm travel barrel with its handwheel engraved (or most likely rolled) with a micrometer scale.
Over a long production run only minor changes were made to the ML1 including parallel instead of taper-face micrometer dials and the application to them of a chrome rather than natural finish. An alterative model was also made, the ML2. Fitted with a 250 mm diameter faceplate, and having three speeds of 100, 300 and 500 r.p.m., this was intended for large-diameter facing work but sales must have been few - most clock, watch and instrument makers already having larger lathes in their workshop.
Despite being a genuine precision lathe, with a number of advanced and ingenious features, models of all years  were finished in an unfortunate choice of paint - a cheap-looking green "Hammerite" - that would have been more at home coating one of the early, casually-assembled and badly-made, Taiwanese lathes made for the amateur market in the 1970s..