Ericsson was founded 140 years ago by Lars Magnus Ericsson – and his wife Hilda. The global company often uses its historical archive as basis for its communication – as it did with this anniversary film.
For the past 20 years, Ericsson has kept its corporate archive at the Centre for Business History in Stockholm. It’s an archive that includes everything from the company’s first ledger to prototypes of the world’s first smartphone. The material in the archive has been used, among other things, to create the website ericssonhistory.com for the telephone giant.
For its 140th anniversary, Ericsson once again chose to use archival material. The result was the film 1876: A marriage of minds, where Ericsson’s history is told through the both loving and business-related correspondence between the founding couple Hilda and Lars-Magnus, which is preserved in the archive.
“Management by love letters,” by the way, is a concept we think should be coined.
