The man who was to give his name to one of the great multinational industrial enterprises of the twentieth century first saw the light of day on May 5, 1846, on a small farm in the Province of Varmland in the middle of Sweden. The nearest village was Wergerbol, in Varmsgog Parish.

Lars Magnus Ericsson was not autobiographical by nature and few details of his childhood years have sifted down to the present. Most of what is known of this period is contained in a letter written to a son when Ericsson was already nearing 70.

The "first serious blow" in his life came, he says, at the age of eleven with the sudden death of his "God-fearing and respected father." Two elder brothers had already abandoned the family farm to earn their living and young Ericsson was left at home with his mother and two younger sisters. Regular school attendance was not required in those days but their is evidence that the boy attended the relatively primitive local schools and "took lessons from the parson" until his 14th year, when he became a day laborer on a neighbourhood farm.

Ericsson was a frail youth and soon discovered that he had neither the disposition nor strength for farm work. But he recalled that his life was "spiritually rich" and that his determinination was fortified "to meet future destiny, honestly and trusting in God."

His first step toward "destiny" came the following year. A mine overseer who had been a good friend of his father, was assembling a work crew to investigate more deposits in the Egersund region of Norway. Ericsson pleaded to go along and was finally accepted. His first job was to carry drills from the smith's shack to the blasting sites, and to help at the forge.

"When we had been there about half a year," Ericsson recalled later, "it happened that the smithy got a yearning for the town and stayed there longer than he should have. While he was away I carried on with the drills. And all were so satisfied with their sharpness that, shortly after, I was entrusted with the work of the smithy. This led to an improvement in my pay, so that I was able to send quite appreciable amounts to those at home who were existing there in poverty, being able to earn nothing."

Ericsson worked on various mining projects, and on a railway construction job, for the next several years, but he had broader horizons.

"Deep down," he wrote, "there smouldered an ever stronger desire to learn a trade, preferably in the mechanical branch." He had been able to put aside a little money and now he sought to apprentice himself to an art-metal smith. His first connection was in the village of Grafas but the man was old, infirm and seldom able to work and soon referred his young assistant another smith, N Andersson in Heljeboda. This shop was equipped for water power and there, for the first time, Ericsson saw a slide lathe.

Andersson could not make a go of things, however, and decided to take a job as head of the nail manufacturing department of the Charlottenberg Works which even in those days employed special machinery. In his contract, Andersson specified that Ericsson should accompany him as his apprentice.

During the next two years, which he described as "years of learning," Ericsson recorded that he had to "work like a dog."

"I received no more than the minimum of food and rest in a dirty smithy room," he remembered nearly 50 years later. "Everything else I had to get as best as I could and I took up the engraving of seals, for which there was a gratifying demand, in my leisure time."

Finally the young man had accumulated enough capital to enable him to take the first big step toward a career that would establish him as one of Sweden's industrial giants. He journeyed to Stockholm, where, after a week's trial, he was hired at the Oller & Company Telegraph Factory. The wages were only five kronor per week. They were, Ericsson recalled later, "sufficient for my needs, so that I thankfully saw life much brighter than ever before and felt then the first breath of the joy of life in my heart." The year was 1867.

Oller's workshop, the first in the electromechanical industry in Sweden, had been established in 1857 by A.H. Oller, the director of telegraphs, to manufacture telegraph instruments and other equipment for telegraph stations. Ericsson worked there for six years, acquiring a reputation as a particularly industrious and skillful instrument maker. In his spare time he studied draftsmanship and languages - primarily German and English - and in various ways prepared himself for further study abroad.