Giant Phone Replica Celebrates 100 Years

A giant, fully-functional replica of an old L.M. Ericsson table top phone celebrates 100 years this week. It was built as a marketing ploy, and reinvented several times during its lifetime.

In 1923 the replica was the centerpiece of the company’s stand at the Gothenburg Exhibition. As described in Ericsson Review, it was “an attraction towards which visitors could not help turning their eyes.”

The telephone housed a complete, fully automatic Ericsson system for 500 lines, to which a few telephones were actually connected. Visitors could experiment, make calls and watch the switching process through the plate-glass windows. The Ericsson Review reports that the demonstrations attracted long lines of visitors every day.

Mobile Marketing a 1960

I found an interesting picture while surfing that Internet thing today. It is two old, Ericsson labeled busses on what seems to be the Island in Toronto, circa 1970. Since my girlfriend is Canadian, and used to live in Toronto, the CN Tower is a very easily recognizable landmark to me. The added bonus of the Swedish vehicles sparked my interest and I decided to do some digging into this picture and its origins.

Ericsson opened its first Canadian office in Montreal in 1953, selling telephones and intercoms systems to telephone companies and to private businesses. As the Canadian market and business continued to flourish, in 1976 Ericsson came up with an innovative way of meeting its customers – on wheels. So in 1976, Ericsson in Canada introduced the Eribus, a customized motorhome developed and designed for visiting clients for on-site product presentations and meetings.

The Eribus was a fully equipped mobile meeting space with a conference table, projector, various product demonstrations and a small kitchen to host customers who were unable to visit the Ericsson showrooms. In a country as large, and scarcely populated as Canada, the Eribus proved to be an excellent take on an early virtual office.

Today this idea seems rather stone age, virtual meeting rooms are a given at any modern office, but it is a interesting idea that it all started with a pair of busses.