L. M. Ericsson
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The Ericofon was launched by the L. M. Ericsson Company in 1954 as a convenient, all-in-one telephone. It was moulded from ABS, which made the telephone light weight. Multiple designers were involved in the design of the Ericofon. Its early prototypes (1941-1949) were overseen by designers Ralph Lysell, a pioneer of Swedish industrial design and Hugo Bloomberg, the head of the technical department at Ericsson (click here for s development sketch). The Ericofon project was then passed on to Swedish designer Hans Gösta Thames from 1949 to 1954, who took from Lysell and Bloomberg’s earlier prototypes to develop a phone that would be ‘light and feel comfortable in the hand’. The dial model was called the Ericofon 500 and the press button model the Ericofon 700. The 500 was also produced in two slightly different cases, the older case being higher than the new case. Ericsson sold this telephone worldwide and even it was an overly major success it sold well in all market places and is now an icon. As Ericsson part owned North Electric in the USA, they got North Electric to build the Ericofon for the American market, thus saving importing them from Sweden. Originally the phone was supposed to be called Erifon, combining the first three letters of the company name with the Greek word for sound but that name was already used for a fire-proofing product for textiles. So ‘co’ for company was added in the middle to create Ericofon. Model DBJ 30 was produced without a dial, whilst DBJ 31 had a dial. These two models were superseded by the Ericofon 500 which had code numbers DBJ 500 to DBJ 549. In the UK British Telecom marketed the phone, both the 500 and 700 models, but called them the Ericofon 600 and 700.
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Last revised: March 22, 2025FM2 | ||||||||
