Perhaps this goes back to an argument Bill Shaine made about Venus needing to upgrade their movements to Incabloc and Breitling using the 72 until it did.

it seems hard to believe that it would take 5 years for a movement as (relatively) common as the 178 to take 5 years to have an incabloc version (if we assume that there were no 178 806s until post the Valjoux 72 era)

I would tend to agree with you, I don't know what the answer is. The only thing I could point to in comparison is the Lemania 15CHT movement, to my knowledge a movement produced at least from the thirties, it doesn't use incabloc until I believe the Fifties. Why did Lemania wait so long to include incabloc in one of it's top chronograph movements? I don't know, but they did?

Unless I've misunderstood the discussion, the 1953 Navitimers being discussed with Venus 178 movements (the would predate the Valjoux) are the subject of debate over whether the date serial number was misstamped, thus a Navitimer actually produced in 1953 is dated 1960. The logical argument being put forward is that these Navitimers don't have Incabloc movements, which one would expect to see in a 1960 Navitimer, so the evidence would point to them actually being correctly stamped and dating from 1953.

However, to throw a spanner in the works, we have Breiting in 1950 making the assertion that all their watches have Incabloc. So by 1953 unless you believe Breitling were misrepresenting themselves, you'd think that the first Navitimer would have incabloc.

I hesitate to bring this up again, but why did Breitling not register Navitimer as a trademark until 1955? Why would you market a watch and the trademark the name after the fact?

Also according to a Wakmann advertisement in a Sept 1947 issue of Life magazine their address was 452 Fifth ave. New York.

In terms of Lemania, I agree that incabloc was a late comer in some of their movements, but in this case it is Breitling that is making the claim and presumably therefore pushing the movement manufacturers to provide it.