LM Ericsson Sweden and Britain

Introduction

This section catalogues the phones produced by Ericssons, from 1892 up to the bakelite models in 1931, with some emphasis on those used in Australia and New Zealand. I have tried to give enough information for model and parts identification, approximate dates of use, variations, etc. A lot of this is already available in various places, but as far as I know there is no single reference available to help collectors.

This listing is neither complete nor accurate. Ericsson phones were built with many local variations, and a lot of these have made their way around the world. There is little information available on the variations, although I have included what I can. Many companies made close copies of the Ericsson designs. Others used unbranded Ericsson parts in their own phones. Many of these phones are incorrectly identified as Ericsson. The Ericsson catalogues themselves are not entirely dependable. Many phones were still being sold from “old” stock long after they had ceased production, or were built with later parts. Serial numbers were not used on British models, so dating these can be difficult. I have included many non-Ericsson phones because their design may lead them to being identified as Ericsson. The differences are highlighted.

Although this section is mainly aimed at Australian and New Zealand collectors, many of the phones shown here were not officially used in Australia. I have included them as they illustrate a type that collectors may find, or they may have been imported by private installers, retailers, and collectors. With greater international trading through the Internet, these phones are now more widely available. Some models are not "genuine" Ericsson, but are the later Australian PMG or British Post Office models which use identifiable Ericsson parts. I have excluded most of the special-purpose phones such as payphones and mining phones, because of lack of space.

A detailed coverage of the British Ericsson phones, particularly those that differ from the Swedish models, is given in Bob Freshwater's Telephone File website.

Line drawings are often used because they can give detail which is difficult to achieve in photographs. Because of the variety of sources they are not to scale. There is little available information on the transfers and decoration used, so don’t pay too much attention to those in the illustrations. I will develop this area as information becomes available. Dates where given have been confirmed from Ericsson catalogues or serial numbers, or are best approximations from catalogue data.

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