Atlas Copco

AB Atlas was founded in Stockholm in 1873 by Eduard Fränckel to make railway equipment, later steam engines and industrial machinery; it was liquidated and refloated as Nya AB Atlas in 1890 with the Wallenberg brothers, and in 1917 merged with AB Diesels Motorer as AB Atlas Diesel. Compressed air became its business: the first stationary screw compressor was delivered in 1955, and in 1956, after the purchase of the Belgian compressor maker Arpic Engineering, the company took the name Atlas Copco, 'Copco' being the abbreviation of its Belgian subsidiary Compagnie Pneumatique Commerciale. The group is headquartered at Nacka, on the site of its old main works at Sickla, and is quoted on Nasdaq Stockholm, where its A and B shares are in the OMXS30; it sells compressors, vacuum equipment, pumps and industrial tools in about 180 countries through some 90 brands and employed about 56,000 people in 2025, with revenues of about 168 billion kronor.

The British subsidiary, previously the Atlas Diesel Co, was renamed Atlas Copco (Great Britain) Ltd in 1956 with its head office at Maylands Avenue, Hemel Hempstead, and a works at Beresford Avenue, Wembley; in 1960 it was listed as supplying compressed-air equipment for mining and in 1961 as compressed-air, mechanical and general electrical engineers with 240 employees. It bought the Consolidated Pneumatic Tool Co in 1987.

Its Land Rover product was the 'Overlander' — 'compressed air anywhere any time' — sold on a leaflet 'as approved by the Rover Co. Ltd for use with the Land-Rover' and received by the Automobile Association's technical library on 1 October 1959. An Atlas Copco NT-series high-speed two-stage vee compressor was installed as a unit pack in the rear body of a Land Rover with power take-off and driven by vee-rope, with a speed reducer that dropped the engine speed when the compressor unloaded; it ran paving breakers, rock drills, clay diggers, pumps, rammers, saws and grinders, and was aimed at contractors, gas and electricity boards, water undertakings, mining engineers and highway authorities who needed to reach sites inaccessible to wheeled portable compressors. The leaflet lists Atlas Copco (Great Britain) Limited, 'compressed air engineers', at Maylands Avenue, Hemel Hempstead, with sales and service depots at London, Bristol, Cardiff, Manchester, Leeds, Walsall, Glasgow, Belfast and Dublin.