Nokia are marketing their latest mobile phone, the N97 as the ultimate communications device, and this seems to be a fully justifiable claim. Nokia have always been a company that has created the technology that has underpinned communications. Its first product was paper which could be viewed as an early communications technology even though not the first as is claimed on the Nokia website. The first mobile communications technology was probably Papyrus which was created in Egypt in 200BC from a plant that grew and still grows along the banks of the Nile. It was certainly a long lasting technology as texts written on it back then are still around having survived for over four thousand years. After Papyrus came Parchment.

This was invented about 1500 BC and was an animal version being fabricated from animal skins which were boiled and baked to produce something people could write on. After Parchment came Vellum, also a non-vegetarian writing technology often made from the skin of unborn animals. Paper as we know it was not invented until much later in China, and is again vegetarian, being made mainly from trees. The Nokia Company derived its name from the location of its second wood pulping paper mill. This was built on the banks of the Nokianvirta River which runs through the Pirkanmaa region of Western Finland. With its ready access to trees which even nowadays cover most of Finland and access to hydropower from the rapidly flowing river the factory was a huge success. Initially using a wood grinding manufacturing technique, it went on to use chemical pulping which is a very smelly process that uses carbon disulphide.

The founder of Nokia was Fredrik Idestam, a mining engineer with expansionist leanings. Following the success of paper her merged his company with a rubber factory and added wellington boots and bicycle tyres. The communications theme continues with the addition of cables and telegraph poles to the company product list. Now Nokia is the largest company in Finland and its fortunes impact upon the whole economy of the country thanks to the world wide success of it’s cheap mobile phones. It is certainly a company that the Finnish people take to heart. The launch of the Nokia N97 is yet another product of which they can be justifiably proud.