Ericsson Alive
Ericsson
KindCompany
Founded1876
StatusAlive
FoundersLars Magnus Ericsson
FieldTelecommunications
Sourcewww.ericsson.com ↗
Swedish telecom giant — its computer science lab produced Erlang for telephone switches, arguably the most quietly consequential language of the telecom age.
1850190019502000
Created Erlang
Lars Magnus Ericsson's workshop has built telephony since 1876 — from manual exchanges to AXE switches to 5G infrastructure.
Its Computer Science Laboratory ( Ellemtel, 1984) produced Erlang — designed by Joe Armstrong, Robert Virding, and Mike Williams to survive switch failures live, hot-swapping code. The 'let it crash' model and OTP framework outlasted the project itself; Erlang now runs WhatsApp and much of telecom.