AGA Gas’s roots date back to 1904 and are based on the inventions of one man – Gustaf Dalén – who was not only one of Sweden’s most important Nobel Laureates, but also the only Laureate to create an industrial group.
Initially AGA mainly focused on acetylene gas for railway lighting. The company employed Dalén as Chief Engineer and Workshop Manager whose inventions enabled AGA to grow rapidly. It was the company’s inventions within lighthouse technology – the flashing beacon in 1905, the AGA compound in 1906, the sun valve and Dalén mixer in 1907 – which were to dictate the company’s future.
By 1909 Dalén was President for the company. In 1912 he was badly injured in an explosion which left him blind for life. Dalén was still convalescing when the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences awarded him the Nobel Prize in Physics for his ‘inventions of self-operating regulators, which in combination with gas accumulators can be used to light lighthouses and light buoys’. He never regained his sight but he remained as the company’s President for another 25 years, until his death 1937.
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