death_date death_place birth_place nationality birth_date alt known_for image article_title name occupation
17 december 1926 hågelby gård , botkyrka , sweden värmskog , värmland , sweden swedish 05 may 1846 l. m. ericsson founder of telephone equipment manufacturer ericsson swedish inventor lars magnus ericsson.jpg lars magnus ericsson
 lars magnus ericsson inventor , entrepreneur
lars magnus ericsson

lars magnus ericsson -lrb- 5 may 1846 -- 17 december 1926 -rrb- was a swedish inventor , entrepreneur and founder of telephone equipment manufacturer ericsson -lrb- incorporated as `` telefonaktiebolaget lm ericsson '' -rrb- .
lars magnus was born in värmskog , värmland , and grew up in the small village of vegerbol located between karlstad and arvika .
at the age of 12 , ericsson 's father died forcing him to seek work as a miner .
he worked until he had money enough to leave the village and move to stockholm in 1867 .
he then worked for six years for an instrument maker named '' Öllers & co. '' who mainly created telegraph equipment .
because of his skills , he was given two state scholarships to study instrument making abroad between 1872 and 1875 .
one of the companies he worked at was siemens & halske .
upon his return to sweden in 1876 , he founded a small mechanical workshop together with his friend carl johan andersson who had also worked at '' Öllers & co. '' .
this workshop was actually a former kitchen of some 13 m2 situated at drottninggatan 15 in the most central part of stockholm .
here , he started a telephone company by analyzing bell company and siemens telephones and creating his own copies in their image .
it was not until they started cooperating with henrik tore cedergren in 1883 that the company would start to grow into the ericsson corporation .
in the year 1900 lars magnus retired from ericsson at the age of 54 .
he kept his shares in the company until 1905 and then sold them all .
he is said to have been a demanding person , and disliked any direct publicity about his personality and did not wish to be idolized .
he was , however , deeply respected by his employees .
he was always a skeptic and cautious in business .
he was also somewhat opposed to patents , as many of the products he made would not have been possible to do if the patent legislation had been overly effective .
when his phones were copied by norwegian companies he did not care , as his phones had in turn been largely copied from siemens .
he initially did not believe in a mass market for telephones , and saw it as a toy for the leisure class .
after his death in 1926 , he was buried at hågelby gård in botkyrka .
at his explicit request , there is no headstone marking his grave .
