Kongsberg Vapenfabrikk

Kongsberg Vapenfabrikk was founded in 1814 as a state arms works in a silver-mining town that had just lost its mine, and it stayed in state hands for the whole of its life. Its first century was spent making edged weapons and small arms for the Norwegian forces; its most consequential product was the Krag–Jørgensen, developed inside the factory by its own director, Ole Herman Krag, with the master gunsmith Erik Jørgensen, and adopted by Norway, Denmark and the United States. Kongsberg also built the Colt M1911 under licence as the Kongsberg Colt, and after the Second World War moved into missiles and guidance systems.

The arms factory as such ended in 1987, when the company was broken up in the wake of the Toshiba–Kongsberg export scandal; its defence work continued as Norsk Forsvarsteknologi and is today part of Kongsberg Gruppen, which counts 1814 as its own founding date. The last Krag–Jørgensen left the Kongsberg line in 1956, sixty-two years after the first.