---
title: "Which came first, the aeroplane or Nintendo?"
description: "the aeroplane vs Nintendo: Nintendo came first, by 14 years — 1889 against 1903. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/aeroplane-vs-nintendo/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, the aeroplane or Nintendo?

**Which came first, the aeroplane or Nintendo?: Nintendo**

1889 — 14 years before the aeroplane

Nintendo came first, by 14 years. Fusajiro Yamauchi began making hanafuda playing cards in Kyoto.

## Side by side

|  | the aeroplane | Nintendo |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1903 | 1889 |
| Date | 1903-12-17 | 1889-09-23 |
| Category | invention | company |
| What happened | The Wright Flyer made four powered flights at Kitty Hawk. | Fusajiro Yamauchi began making hanafuda playing cards in Kyoto. |

## the aeroplane

The first flight lasted 12 seconds and covered 36 metres — less than the wingspan of a Boeing 747. The Wrights' real contribution was not the engine but three-axis control, which they worked out with a wind tunnel of their own design after finding the published lift tables wrong. Sixty-six years separate that flight from the Moon landing, well within a single lifetime.

## Nintendo

Nintendo was founded in 1889 to make handmade hanafuda cards, and it was a playing-card company for about eighty years. It is older than the Ford Motor Company (1903), older than the aeroplane, older than the Eiffel Tower by five months, and older than the modern Olympic Games. Before settling on video games in the 1970s it tried taxis, instant rice and a chain of love hotels.

## Common questions

### Which came first, the aeroplane or Nintendo?

Nintendo, by 14 years — 1889 against 1903.

### When did the aeroplane start?

1903. The Wright Flyer made four powered flights at Kitty Hawk.

### When did Nintendo start?

1889. Fusajiro Yamauchi began making hanafuda playing cards in Kyoto.

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## Sources

- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History — Smithsonian Institution (https://naturalhistory.si.edu/)
- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]