Alfred Stromberg

THE NAME "STROMBERG" has gotten a lot of traction as hot rodding's most famous carburetor, the 1930s-era EE series--better known as the "97"--has once again become a hot commodity. In fact, it's even back in production.

Stromberg the man, however, is less well known. Like Harry Tillotson, William Carter and the Holley Brothers, Stromberg's eponymous mixer of fuel and air has long outlived the man himself. He is actually far better remembered by enthusiasts of vintage telephones and radios, thanks to his lifelong involvement with those products as well.

Alfred Stromberg was born near Stockholm, Sweden, on March 9, 1861--slightly over two years before Henry Ford. He would grow into a "little, unassuming man with sharp features and intelligent eyes ... with great will power, with nerves and muscles of steel," according to the Svenska Tribunen, a Swedish-American newspaper of his heyday. Like Ford, he would get his start working in one of the great establishments of a famous 19th century inventor, though not Thomas Edison but Alexander Graham Bell.

As a teenager, Stromberg started his career as an electrician, and by the age of 18 he had risen to the position of foreman at Öller & Co, Stockholm-based maker of telegraph instruments, telephones, and sewing machines. It was while working for Öller & Co that he installed the first battery transmitter to be used in Scandinavia.

When the U.S.-based Bell Telephone Company established itself in Stockholm, Stromberg joined that organization, where he performed much of the work installing the Stockholm telephone exchange as well as several of the telephone exchanges in Northern Sweden. Around 1884, Stromberg took the opportunity to join Bell's Chicago office. In 1886, he married a fellow Swede, Ellen (or Ella) Johnson, with whom he had four children.

One story from this time, likely apocryphal but too good not to share, is that upon his arrival in the United States, the ambitious young immigrant found himself short of funds and attempted to obtain a loan of 25 cents. Denied such an investment, Stromberg was said to have vowed never again to attempt to operate on credit.

Over the next five years, Stromberg worked for Bell, inventing refinements to telephone equipment on the company's behalf. In 1890, he set out on his own, carrying his electronic expertise to the Thomson-Houston Co. and the Chicago Electric Protective Co. for the improvement of burglar alarms.

When the Bell telephone patents expired in 1893-'94, Stromberg and another Swedish ex-Bell employee named Androv (some sources say Anders) Carlson joined together to form the firm of Stromberg-Carlson, producing telephone equipment for companies outside the Bell System. One of the biggest customers of Stromberg-Carlson was the Rochester, New York, telephone company, and in 1905 a group of Rochester investors purchased the concern, leaving both Stromberg and Carlson wealthy men. Stromberg-Carlson would later expand into radio and phonograph production, including car radios. It still exists today as a subsidiary of Genband U.S. LLC, still producing, in essence, telephone equipment.

The energetic Stromberg was not content to retire in his 40s, however. After assisting in Stromberg-Carlson's re-establishment in Rochester, he returned to Chicago and was soon involved in the Perry Time Stamp Company and the Goldberg Motor Car Devices Manufacturing Company. At Perry, which soon bore the name Stromberg Electric Chronograph Company, he oversaw the creation of an automated time-stamp system, which became familiar to hourly workers everywhere. That company is now known as Stromberg Office Products.

At Goldberg, renamed Stromberg Motor Devices circa 1909, Stromberg (and his old friend Carlson) brought much-needed capital to the designs of John Goldberg. A large factory was erected in Chicago, and the company's one-a-day production of carburetors for automobiles, motor boats and aircraft, was soon increased to one per minute.

Stromberg's carburetor operation would prove just as successful as his telephone and time-clock efforts. The carburetor company was purchased by Bendix Aviation in 1929, shortly after the death of Carlson. Stromberg himself died in 1913, one day short of his 52nd birthday. The original Stromberg carburetor company would produce its last units for U.S. consumption in 1974, but the name and the famous 97 design live on with the revived Stromberg Carburetor company of Suffolk, England.