Lars Magnus Ericsson (5 May 1846 – 17 December 1926) was a Swedish inventor, entrepreneur and founder of telephone equipment manufacturer Ericsson (incorporated as Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson).
Education
Lars Ericsson studied at the village school for 5 years. This experience taught him to read and write, and was his only formal education. Nevertheless, he constructed Sweden's first telephone line at the age of 17. The idea behind the telephone was simple: a person speak into a membrane, which starts to vibrate and causes a pin to vibrate. These vibrations are then sent to the other telephone, via a power cable, where another pin and membrane begin vibrating and the receiver hears what is being said. German scientist, Johann Philipp Reis, had built such a telephone in1861.
Career
Lars Magnus Ericsson worked for six years for an instrument maker named Öllers & Co. who mainly created telegraph equipment. The workshop director, Öller, helped Lars Magnus to get the government travel grant for foreign studies. The 26-year-old Lars Magnus left Sweden and spent three years in Germany, Switzerland and Russia.
Upon his return to Sweden in 1876, he founded a small mechanical workshop together with his friend Carl Johan Andersson who had also worked at Öllers & Co.. Here, he started a telephone company by analyzing Bell company and Siemens telephones and creating his own copies in their image.
Bell's telephones were not patented in Sweden, so Lars Magnus improved Bell's construction and made the telephone less clumsy. As early as 1878, Lars Magnus started selling his first telephones. In 1881, L M Ericsson & Co were appointed main supplier to the newly established Telephone Association in Gävle, Sweden. It was not until they started cooperating with Henrik Tore Cedergren (Stockholms Allmämma Telefonaktiebolag) in 1883 that the company would start to grow into the Ericsson corporation.
In the year 1900 Lars Magnus retired from Ericsson at the age of 54. He kept his shares in the company until 1905 and then sold them all.He withdrew to live on the Alby farm and subsequently on the Hågelby farm in Botkyrka, Sweden until his death.