---
title: "Which came first, Apple or Wikipedia?"
description: "Apple vs Wikipedia: Apple came first, by 25 years — 1976 against 2001. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/apple-vs-wikipedia/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Apple or Wikipedia?

**Which came first, Apple or Wikipedia?: Apple**

1976 — 25 years before Wikipedia

Apple came first, by 25 years. Jobs, Wozniak and Wayne founded Apple Computer Company.

## Side by side

|  | Apple | Wikipedia |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1976 | 2001 |
| Date | 1976-04-01 | 2001-01-15 |
| Category | company | technology |
| What happened | Jobs, Wozniak and Wayne founded Apple Computer Company. | Wikipedia launched as a side project to feed a different encyclopedia. |

## Apple

Apple was founded on 1 April 1976, a year and a day after Microsoft. Ronald Wayne, the third founder, sold his 10% stake back for $800 twelve days later. The Apple I was a bare circuit board sold for $666.66; the Apple II of 1977 was the machine that made the company.

## Wikipedia

Wikipedia launched in January 2001 as a scratchpad for Nupedia, a peer-reviewed encyclopedia project started in 2000 that had produced about two dozen articles in a year. The wiki produced more than that in its first month and Nupedia was abandoned in 2003. Wikipedia is older than Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the iPhone.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Apple or Wikipedia?

Apple, by 25 years — 1976 against 2001.

### When did Apple start?

1976. Jobs, Wozniak and Wayne founded Apple Computer Company.

### When did Wikipedia start?

2001. Wikipedia launched as a side project to feed a different encyclopedia.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]