Elektrisk Bureau or EB was a Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 manufacturer of telecommunication

Telecommunication

Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...

 equipment. It was founded in 1882 and lasted until 1993 when it became part of Asea Brown Boveri

Asea Brown Boveri

ABB is a Swiss-Swedish multinational corporation headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland, and best known for its robotics. ABB operates mainly in the power and automation technology areas. It ranked 143rd in Forbes Ranking ....

 (ABB). The company was located at Billingstad

Billingstad

Billingstad is a village in Asker municipality, Akershus county, Norway. It is close to the border to Bærum and Vestmarka. It has 2,349 residents ....

 in Asker

Asker

Asker is a municipality in Akershus county, Norway. It is part of the Viken traditional region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Asker. The municipality is a suburb of Oslo, the national capital...

.

History

In 1882 Carl Söderberg founded EB. The background was the Söderberg, who had started a telephone union in Christiania, felt that Bell System

Bell System

The Bell System was the American Bell Telephone Company and then, subsequently, AT&T led system which provided telephone services to much of the United States and Canada from 1877 to 1984, at various times as a monopoly. In 1984, the company was broken up into separate companies, by a U.S...

 had been charging too high prices. In 1885 the company was made limited

Aksjeselskap

Aksjeselskap is the Norwegian term for a stock-based company. It is usually abbreviated AS or A/S, especially when used in company names. An AS is always a limited company, i.e. the owners cannot be held liable for any debt beyond the stock capital...

 and a year later Akers Mekaniske Verksted became the largest owner. EB became the largest domestic producer of telephone systems as well as export. But during the 1920s when the automatic centrals were introduced, EB lost its leading position. Instead focus was moved to the consumer market, and in 1928 L. M. Ericsson

Ericsson

Ericsson , one of Sweden's largest companies, is a provider of telecommunication and data communication systems, and related services, covering a range of technologies, including especially mobile networks...

 became the main owner of EB, granting a great deal of patents that EB could utilize. EB also had close connections with Televerket

Telenor

Telenor Group is the incumbent telecommunications company in Norway, with headquarters located at Fornebu, close to Oslo. Today, Telenor Group is mostly an international wireless carrier with operations in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and Asia, working predominantly under the Telenor brand...

, whom EB was the largest producer of telecommunication equipment for. This was especially true in the late 1960s to abolish waiting lists for telephone lines. The Swedish ASEA

ASEA

Allmänna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebolaget was a Swedish industry company. It merged with the Swiss Brown, Boveri & Cie in 1988 to form Asea Brown Boveri...

eventually bought 67% of EB, and in 1988 the company became part of the new Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) group, through the brand EB was used until 1993, when ABB bought the rest of EB.