I hope you will enjoy this brief description of our beautiful town and its university. (Finns även på svenska.) I wrote it and took the pictures in my spare time. This presentation is protected by copyright. All information in this WWW server of Lysator academic computer society is the result of voluntary work.
The pictures show the City Hall, the Cathedral, and open air museum Old Linköping.
Linköping is the capital of Östergötland county and is situated where the highway (Euroroute E4) crosses river Stångån, which is part of Kinda Canal. North of Linköping, Stångån enters lake Roxen, which is part of Göta Canal, the blue ribbon across Sweden. Linköping is the center of a vast open farmland, and was long dominated by small scale trade and official functions like the county administration and the Cathedral. Linköping is still dominated by the Cathedral. You can see its high tower from a long distance.
Linköping nowadays is Sweden's fifth largest city, counting close to 130 thousand inhabitants. But for much of the 20th century Linköping was quite a small town. The boom came during World War II, when several small aircraft factories merged into Saab, short for Svenska Aeroplan Aktie Bolaget.
Saab's high-tech production of airplanes and computers was an important reason for Linköping University to be located to Linköping, and not to one of the other large cities Örebro or Västerås. Linköping Institute of Technology, LiTH, was established in 1969 and soon expanded into a full university.
In early 1973, when the first students were in their final year, they formed a computer club called Lysator. About ten years later, another computer club, Ctrl-C, was founded.
The pictures show the Physics building (being constructed in the summer of 1994), the Q house (with the computer clubs) and the B building with ham club LiTHsa's shack and antenna on the roof.
Ryd is an old mansion west of Linköping, that was remade into a suburb in the 1970s. This is where most of the students live in dormitories, but many "common people" also live in Ryd. Of special interest is the students' computer network RydNet.
The pictures show Ryd manor, nowadays a popular waterhole for students, Ryd Mall with shops, bank, and post office, and the dormitories at Björnkärrsgatan 4.
Located close to the university is Mjärdevi Science Park. In 1983 the first spin-off companies were established here, among them Context Vision and Innovativ Vision, both active in the field of image processing.
Later, more spin-off companies have formed and many other companies have moved to Mjärdevi. The computer business is dominating. The pictures show the oldest building at Teknikringen 1, Collegium (a conference and business hotel), and Teknikringen 5 (shared by companies IFS and Innovativ Vision).
In this region, there is a lot of activity in the field of computer networking. Lysator operates the dorm network Rydnet. Rumors say a similar network is being constructed for Mjärdevi science park, near the University.
In the summer of 1994, a regional (Östergötland, around twin cities Norrköping--Linköping) information technology commission is being formed. This joint commission between the regional authority (Landstinget), the regional representation of the national government (Länsstyrelsen), and the union of municipalities in the region (Östergötlands Kommunförbund). The minutes of their first meeting is available in Swedish.
Linköping's sister city in the U.S., Palo Alto, California, has made far more progress in the networking field, though.
![[Lysator]](/icons/lyslogo.gif){kind=icon}
![[City.Net]](citynet.gif)
Revision 3 Jan 1995 / Lars Aronsson.