Elektrisk Bureau

Barely ten years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, Norway was among the world leaders in telephones per inhabitant. Bell had not patented the telephone in Scandinavia, which allowed the free establishment of competing systems. The strongest competitor was the Swedish L.M. Ericsson, which had an active agent in Norway in the Swede Carl Söderberg (1841–1902). During the most hectic years of expansion, Ericsson had trouble delivering enough equipment for both its home market in Sweden and abroad, and so in large part helped its Norwegian agent set up a competing business.

In 1882 Söderberg established Elektrisk Bureau with financial backing from the goldsmith Oluf Tostrup. Söderberg brought with him a stock of goods and a solid customer base as a main supplier to telephone companies in Kristiania, Bergen, and Stavanger. From business premises in Karl Johans gate 5, the plan was to continue selling telephone apparatus from Ericsson and other brands. The first manager was the engineer Bertrand Kolbenstvedt, who with a small staff sold telephone apparatus and did other electrical installation work. The firm also held an important agency for the German Schuckert's heavy-current technology.

In 1883 the instrument maker Thorstein Øyan (1855–1924) was hired as works master and placed alongside Kolbenstvedt in the daily management. Two years later EB launched its first own-produced telephone, based on its own patents. In 1886 Akers mekaniske Verksted came in as an owner, and EB established itself as a more dedicated factory in premises by Akers yard in Vika.

In the 1890s EB saw strong growth in the telephone market. The factory manager Øyan designed the cast-iron wall telephone, which became a sales success and established EB as a leading player in telecommunications equipment, and he also developed a carbon-granule microphone that drew international attention. In 1896 EB opened a new factory at Majorstua, in what is today Middelthuns gate 17. The four-story, 2,700-square-meter building had the capacity to produce up to 7,000 telephone sets a year, and two years later the neighboring site was developed into a dynamo factory. By the turn of the century EB was among Norway's leading industrial companies, with 370 employees and a strong market position in telephony and electronic articles.

The expansion with the new factory meant a shift to mass production, in which a large part of the increased workforce consisted of women. Although the women mainly represented the unskilled part of production, EB hired Norway's first female technical draftsman in Thea Falck-Ytter (1862–1953). In the wake of the 1899 crash, EB was forced to increase its focus on the export market, and within a few years, by 1905, it had increased exports by several hundred percent, delivering telephone apparatus and exchanges to countries in Europe, the United States, and cities in Africa, Asia, and South America. In the decade up to the First World War the home market normalized, with renewed growth in domestic telephony.