I

f it was not for eggs, Bang & Olufsen (B&O)might not have survived this long.

Two pioneering engineers from Denmark, Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen '€” who were both in their early 20s '€” were the visionary duo who teamed up in the age of radio in the 1920s, and together worked on discovering and understanding the latest ideas and technology of the time.

But it was Anna, the mother of Olufsen, a homemaker from Struer, Denmark, who helped fund the company through the sale of their family'€™s eggs during the first struggling years of B&O, which is now widely recognized as the most prestigious consumer electronics company in the world.

The Olufsens also provided the tower room at Quistrup, Olufsen'€™s old family manor house located just south of Struer, which served both as living quarters and laboratory for Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen during this period. The manor house, where three generations of the Olufsens now live, is still well-preserved.

The two young innovators met at the Electro-technical School in Aarhus in the early 1920s, where they soon discovered their shared interest in further developing new technologies to enhance the radio experience.

One of Bang'€™s early ideas was to relieve radio listeners from the spiraling costs and other setbacks of battery power. This led to the creation of a mains-powered radio, which was quite revolutionary at the time. Consequently, this invention changed not only the radio industry but also how people experienced entertainment.

For the first eight years as partners, neither of them drew a salary but focused singularly on their development projects.

During a visit to Quistrup, Susanne Olufsen, the wife of late Svend Olufsen, described Peter Bang as '€œthe nerd'€ between the duo.

'€œHe would wake up at 3 a.m. and thought '€˜I have to try this'€™ and run to the factory in his pajamas and forgot about the time until the employees started to come in at 7 a.m.,'€ Olufsen recalled.

Meanwhile, Svend Olufsen complimented his partner by being the marketer who always thought about how to sell the products and could actually talk to people.

The journey of B&O, the most important business in Struer '€” it employs almost a third of the town'€™s population of about 11,000 people '€” is well documented at Struer Museum, where there is a large exhibition where old and new B&O products, including the very first radio it produced, are displayed together with a lot of famous Danish design furniture.