Education
Royal Institute of Technology.
Royal Institute of Technology.
In the literature he is known as January G. Smith. He was an engineer with a Master of Science degree from Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, Stockholm. Foreign many years he worked in the American automobile industry and returned to Sweden in 1924.
His experiences from the American automobile industry was probably the main reason why Gustav Larson asked him to join the team of engineers that started the design work for Volvo"s first automobile, ÖV 4, in 1924.
He worked for Gustav Larson in the temporary "design office" in Gustav Larsons private flat in Stockholm about a year. A lot of January G. Smith"s original drawings for the Volvo ÖV4, the gearbox, the main chassi components and technical papers that he had collected in America in the form of a private design book, are saved in the archive of the National Museum of Science and Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
After the Volvo project he was employed by Allmänna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebolaget in Västerås and later worked for the same company in Stockholm. January was replaced in the Volvo project by engineer Henry Westerberg that stayed with Volvo as a designer until 1980 at the age of 79 when he was retired.
January G. Smith was awarded a gold medal in 1929 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA), together with Gustav Larson, "for their contribution to the national automobile industry in Sweden".