The history of Martin began in 1978 when founder Peter Johansen realized how to make a smoke generator from a coffee maker.

[2] The company was founded in Aarhus in 1986 and began producing primarily fog machines and a small selection of disco lights in 1987.

[5] Martin enjoyed continued growth until 2008 but was hit hard by the financial crisis and reported a loss of more than 200 million Danish kroner in 2009 [7] and had layoffs of 130 employees at their production sites in Frederikshavn.

In 2010 the Confederation of Danish Industries awarded with its annual product price for the MAC 350 Entour LED based automated lighting fixture.

[14] The acquisition led to the release of the Mach brand which was sold to a cooperation of Canadian and Hong Kong investors.

[19] Martin has been displayed both a number of major international events such as the 2001 Eurovision song contest in Copenhagen, the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens[7] and at the Beijing 2008 summer olympics where Martin was the main provider of automated lighting with over 1100 luminaries at the opening ceremony.

By 1997, the company realized its full potential as a leading manufacturer in the emerging market of DMX intelligent stage lighting products with the launch of the MAC 500 and 600.

In addition to moving heads, Martin also manufactures flat mirror and rotating drum-style scanners, strobes, color changers, semi-intelligent effects, LED fixtures, controllers for Intelligent lighting, media servers and a line of smoke machines.