In the post-World-War-II era the Martin Machine & Electric Co. manufactured a benchtop drill press (labeled GEM or GEM-KING). The business was established in 1925 by W. Leo Martin and did a wide range of business: motor repair and sales, power transmission sales, manufacture of goose-neck trailers, foundry water heaters, replacement parts for tractors, and more. The business survived into the 1980s.

Information Sources

• 1948-49 Standard Metal Directory page 247, in a listing of Iowa foundries: "Barker Products Co. (See also Martin Machine & Foundry Co., Ottumwa, Iowa)".
• 1952 book, The Story of Iowa: The Progress of an American State, Volume 4, page 773.

  W. Leo Martin—"The Martin Machine and Electric Company, almost along in its field in this part of the state, is constantly bringing more and more business to Ottumwa." The Ottumwa "Daily Courier" has written of the business which W. Leo Martin started in the southeastern Iowa-northern Missouri trading center with a "kit of tools" in 1925. With the slogan, "We Repair, Rewind and Rebuild All Electric Motors of All Sizes," he has developed a business not only in accordance with the slogan but also making tractor parts, and bottled gas stock water heaters, and doing other manufacturing in the engineering...