When it first came, the telephone revolutionized long-distance communication. The next step, for the dreamers in the phone industry, was of course to enable phone calls to every location, no matter where the speaker happened to be. Today, we would say “calling people, not places.”
The development of radio communications played a pivotal role in achieving this dream. In 1904, John Ambrose Fleming's creation of the vacuum tube made radio communication a reality. While initially a military priority, civilian usage emerged. In 1946, American network operator AT&T received approval to establish the world's first mobile telephone service in St. Louis, Missouri. This system, featuring a base station with six channels, utilized car-mounted phones with large batteries hidden in the trunk.
Ten years later, Ericsson made its own foray into the mobile sector, but the network it constructed could never handle more than 100 subscribers, who would have to lug around “mobile” phones the size of suitcases.
It wasn't until the development of transistors and microprocessors that cellular concepts became viable. The Nordic countries and Great Britain pioneered mobile telephone systems in the early 1980s. However, Saudi Arabia was the first country globally to implement a functional cellular system for mobile telephony in 1981, delivered by Ericsson.
Returning to the 1950s, Ericsson also introduced a brand-new phone this decade: the Ericofon. It was a groundbreaking one-piece-phone with an integrated receiver, microphone and rotary dial in a single handset. Given its final design by Gösta Thames, its convenience and innovative design propelled its success. The product's name, however, didn't resonate with the public, who instead began calling it “the Cobra”.
Bonus: the videophone
Inspired by other countries testing of videophones, Ericsson began to develop a videophone in the mid-1960s. The audio component was the Ericovox loudspeaker phone, and it was connected to a monitor with an attached camera. It made it all the way to a working prototype. In fact, on 3 December 1971, the first transatlantic video telephone call was made between then new tele satellite station at Tanum in Sweden and the COMSAT building in Washington. This call was transmitted via the INTELSAT IV tele satellite, and the video telephones had been designed and manufactured by Ericsson. Unfortunately, most of the prototype users were not particularly impressed by the videophone. Many could not see any reason at all to use it, and at this stage, Ericson abandoned this forward-looking project.
More: Growing across Sweden
In the 1940’s Ericsson began to outgrew its premises at Telefonplan in Stockholm. In 1946, the company therefore started a process of relocating to other parts of Sweden. The reason for this initial postwar wave of relocation was the shortage of workers and housing in the Stockholm area. Ericsson, encouraged by the authorities, relocated jobs to other parts of the country where there was considerable unemployment, for example Karlshamn in the southeast and Söderhamn on the eastern coastline.