- Frans Wilhelm Lindqvist
Frans Wilhelm Lindqvist (1862-1931) was a Swedish inventor. He designed the first sootless
kerosene stove , operated bycompressed air . He started a company, Primus, to manufacture and sell the Primus stove.Lindqvist was born in
Västergötland , and lived inGothenburg for a few years before moving toStockholm , where he started to work in theAB Separator factory. Inspired by a workmate, he and his brother were able to design a new kind of burner for kerosene stoves. By vaporising the kerosene before it reached the burner, their construction had a sootless, smokeless, hot flame.Lindqvist started selling his stove on a small-scale basis, but the business soon grew. The product and the company were dubbed Primus. Together with a companion, Johan Victor Svensson, Lindqvist started industrial production in 1892. With the help of marketing firm B.A. Hjorth & Co sales grew, and soon the Primus stove was exported abroad. In the 1910s, more than half a million stoves were made annually. In 1930, more than 500 people worked at the Primus factory, on the
Stockholm islandLilla Essingen . Among them werePer Albin Hansson , futurePrime Minister of Sweden .In 1984, the Primus stove was depicted on a Swedish stamp, commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the Swedish patent system.
External links
* [http://www.primus.se/EN/company/company_history.html Primus company history] on Primus' official home page
* [http://www.sweden.se/templates/cs/BasicFactsheet____3127.aspx Swedish inventions and discoveries] -Swedish Institute fact sheet
* [http://www.tekniskamuseet.se/templates/objectPage.aspx?id=14757 1929 Primus product catalog] at the Swedish Museum of Technology web site
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