Photo: Ericsson
You think the mythology swirling around Apple and the iPhone is impressive? The ghost of Steve Jobs ain’t got nothin’ on Lars Magnus Ericsson.Also at Wired:
As the lemmings line up across the country for their golden Apple communicators and the pundits hail the new iOS 7 mobile operating system as a work of otherworldly Ivian genius, let’s take a moment to remember the late, great Lars — the Swedish founder of the Ericsson radio and telephone empire. The history books will tell you that in 1910, on a farm in Sweden, more than three decades before Steve Jobs was even born, Lars Magnus Ericsson invented the world’s first car phone.
By 1910, Ericsson had retired from life as a telecommunications mogul, retreated to the Swedish countryside with his wife Hilda, and turned himself into a farmer — some 10 decades before growing your own food became a cliche among the tech elite. But, the history books say, he also found the time to equip his car with a phone.
As explained by John Meurling and Richard Jeans, authors of the Mobile Phone Book: The Invention of the Mobile Telephone Industry, Ericsson equipped his car with a phone that could hook into the telephone lines running along the side of the road — after he parked and Hilda pulled out her sticks.
“There were two long sticks, like fishing rods, handled by Hilda. She would hook them over a pair of telephone wires, seeking a pair that were free,” he book reads. “When they were found, Lars Magnus would crank the dynamo handle of the telephone, which produced a signal to an operator in the nearest exchange.”...MORE
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