I just reread that epic thread on UG/Zenith/Martel from watchuseek discussing all this. It's very complicated, and somewhat hard to follow. There's a lot of very good info in that thread but it's not clear to me that any definite conclusions were reached, but there were lots of opinions. Whatever the relationship between UG and Martel, it seems very closely related, not clear if they were exclusive suppliers, or essentially a partially owned subsidiary, or a completely independent company. Plus the fact that the movement manufacture building has a giant sign on the outside that say Universal, but some people suggest that is just a promotional mockup, not a historical photograph, but I did not see this proven. Plus the cross over of the same staff in high level positions between the companies. The fact that UG owns some of the patents on what some people were considering Martel inventions, so perhaps they were purchased from Martel by UG (not only the movements but the patents). It all gets into a level of complexity that requires very precise definitions of language used to describe these relationships, rather than very general terms like who "made" something, or if these are "separate" companies, etc.
It seems to me that UG had a unique relationship with Martel, not shared by any other company. It's not clear to me the precise nature of that relationship, if they simply had an exclusive contract, and/or if UG owned a partial, dominant, or complete percentage of Martel. It seems to me Zenith did not share this same relationship with Martel early on, otherwise they would not have gone "through" UG to source Martel movements, nor would there by the kind of documentation of Zenith models in the UG archives, suggesting not only movements but complete watches were provided to Zenith by UG during this time period.
Later on it appears Zenith purchased/gained control/ownership of Martel, so these relationships were not fixed and changed over time, from the 30s to the 60s, so it's important to talk about specific models and specific time periods, not generalized over decades.
Anyhow, interesting stuff. Would be curious what conclusions other people have reached from that thread.
@LouS was a major contributor from OF, wish we still had him as a regular poster around here.
