Nokia began its corporate existence in 1865 as a humble single paper mill operation located on the banks of the Tammerkoski rapids in southwestern Finland.

A closer look

Nokia began its corporate existence in 1865 as a humble single paper mill operation located on the banks of the Tammerkoski rapids in southwestern Finland. Over the following century, the company aggressively pivoted through various disparate industries, manufacturing everything from rubber boots and gas masks to toilet paper before eventually deciding to dominate the indestructible brick phone market in the late nineties. There is something profoundly hilarious about the fact that the same company that provided the unkillable Nokia 3310—a device capable of surviving a nuclear blast—spent its formative years producing the literal most fragile and disposable wiping products known to mankind