Edited by Nicola Carbonara
Elegant, practical and with an unmistakable design. We are all familiar with the clean, handy lines of today's smartphone phones, objects adapted to our digital needs. But every era has expressed demands that the technology has also attempted to satisfy with the support of a design in step with the times and needs. Communication has indeed evolved over time and telephoning, since the 1950s, was an action supported by standard and practical devices whose design was studied down to the smallest detail. And it was precisely the latter that, starting in the 1950s, the Swedish company LM Ericsson and its designers Ralph Lysell, Thames Has Gösta and Hugo Blomberg have thought of softening it up, creating a curvaceous and futuristic device called Ericofon, otherwise known as 'Cobra Phone'.
Ericsson was founded back in 1876 and was initially involved in repairing telecommunications equipment. Over the years, however, it became increasingly important in the production of telephone equipment: in 1909 it produced the famous fork telephone, thus confirming the company's international success. In 1954, LM Ericsson designed a telephone that was destined to become iconic and, to do this, he assembled a team of designers led by Gösta Thames in the 1940s. The imperative was to design a device that was small, handy and easy to use. The designor the prototype that emerged the following year was Hugo Blomberg and Ralph Lysell, although the decisive design of the Ericofon is signed by Thames, an engineer with no formal training in design but determined to make up for this lack.
It took Thames and the designers more than ten years to realise the 'Cobra Phone'. One of the biggest difficulties, the need to find a suitable and resistant material, was overcome thanks to the recent invention of ABS plastic and ferromagnetic materials.
The Ericofon was first launched in 1956, reaching Italy, Switzerland, Brazil and Australia. Later, in the 1960s, it was the turn of the United States where it achieved widespread sales success.
Visually harmonious, the 'Cobra Phone' It was equipped with state-of-the-art technology and a beautiful and practical appearance: the dial disc for dialling numbers was located at the base of the device together with the switch, so that only the microphone and handset were left visible.
Available in a range of vibrant colours, the telephone, also thanks to its peculiar appearance, often appeared in glossy magazines and is now a coveted collector's item mirroring an era in which communication was already becoming increasingly personal. A forerunner, this, of a trend that was to become increasingly popular from the 1990s onwards with the spread of mobile phones.
