During the early- to mid-20th century, the company was well known in American industry. Its products, both turret lathes and instruments, played very prominent roles in the war efforts for both world wars. Warner & Swasey took part in the transition to numerical control (NC) and computer numerical control (CNC) machine tools during the 1950s through 1970s, but like many other machine tool builders during those decades, it ultimately was affected by the prevailing winds of merger and acquisition in the industry. It was acquired by Bendix Corporation in 1980.