Lacking creative title, (yet preserve continuity) "Wait, one more second......"

[Toolmaker51]

It was very clumsy to operate, at first. But once a physical set-up sorted out, some finesse IS possible. All the utility is in tooling it up, like any machine tool.

I wouldn't recommend one as a whim. My favorite press type and most anxious to build is a screw press. The utmost ratio of tonnage and incremental travel. All the others can only be monitored, screw press is full control.
Suppose some kind of CNC control has been applied with linear readers. OK, how is a few thousand $'s of electronics better than a long travel indicator?
The oldest use of screw presses I know of, straightening barrels before and after rifling. The craftsman would peer thru a barrel angled upward, pointed at a thin wire hanging in a window. It imparts a line reflecting off the tubes inside surface revealing every deviation from straight. The barrel is already mounted in a press, so rotating and moving back and forth ironed out everything.