A Closer Look At The Universal Geneve Calendar Watches Of The ‘40s
The Lesser-Known Brother Of The Tri-Compax
In 1944, the world was in turmoil. French, British, and U.S. forces landed at Normandy, while the Russian forces fought Nazi Germany on the Eastern Front. Meanwhile, the neutral Swiss were trying to stay alive and viable while surrounded by war.
At Universal Geneve, they wanted to do something big.
It was to be the 50th anniversary of their company, and the plan was to release two new complicated watches in honor of the event. To do this, they had to rely on some of their old business partners.
At this point, Zenith, Universal Geneve, and Martell were still sort of collaborative companies. UG had released the first-ever wrist chronograph in 1917, but if you read their brand literature even then, it refers to their ‘launching’ of the complication. In reality, this movement was made by Martell. To understand all of this, we’ll have to dig a bit deeper.
Zenith and Universal were both founded in Le Locle, a town on the Swiss-French border only 10km from Martell. Even in the early 1900s, both companies were using Martell movements for their watches. This continued even when Universal moved to Geneva in 1919, and sometimes the two brands even advertised together.
This brand cooperation was cemented further in 1935 when the CEO of Universal, Raoul Perret, was added to the board of Zenith. This was how the Swiss worked in those days; certain towns and areas were in charge of certain trades and crafts. Sharing things between companies was seen as efficient and a good idea. So it made a lot of sense for UG to ask Martell for help with the new watches.
UG’s internal model name for their chronographs was ‘Compax,’ (yet another thing they shared with Zenith!) so the idea was to come up with a ‘Tri-Compax.’ This would be a watch with chronograph, calendar, and moonphase complications inside. Remember, Patek Philippe had only introduced the ref. 1518 perpetual calendar/moonphase/chronograph watch in 1941, so this idea by UG was fairly ambitious.
(sidenote: we know that a perpetual calendar is not an annual calendar, but it’s still very high-end watchmaking even in 2020, much more so in the early forties.)
The Tri-Compax was realized in 1943, and along with it came a slimmer, dressier calendar watch with moonphase sans chronograph module. This ended up becoming the UG caliber 291 movement that beats inside the pictured watch. As was (and in a lot of ways still is) tradition, Martell engineered the movement and created the base plates and parts of the ‘works,’ and all pieces were then sent to UG or Zenith. Once at their final destinations, the parts were decorated, finished, and assembled by workers of the respective brands.
Most examples of this watch live in the 32–34mm range. Earlier versions have a ‘moon man’ with eyes and nose; some later versions have a more abstract depiction of the moon. This variation may also be due to third-party redials. Martell eventually even released this style of watch under its own brand name as well.
