They actually started out as a wood pulp mill (powered by rapids at a river called Nokia) in 1868. This expanded to a paper factory in 1880 and a cellulose factory in 1885 and later on a rubber factory, and then a cable factory, and the telecoms came up as a spin-off of cable manufacturing (starting with modems).<p>The pulp mill site looks like this today:
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tinyurl.com&#x2F;nokianvirta" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tinyurl.com&#x2F;nokianvirta</a><p>I worked in a Nokia R&amp;D house that was built in Espoo in 1975; it had been constructed with a 10 tons per square meter load rating in three floors so that &quot;if this silly electronics thing doesn&#x27;t take off, we can always bring in the cable machines.&quot;<p>The name Nokia comes from the name of the river, which in turn supposedly comes from a reference to &quot;noki&quot; (soot) as it is a pre-historic trading site of black skins of fur.