---
title: "Which came first, the car or Monopoly?"
description: "the car vs Monopoly: the car came first, by 18 years — 1886 against 1904. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/car-vs-monopoly/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, the car or Monopoly?

**Which came first, the car or Monopoly?: the car**

1886 — 18 years before Monopoly

the car came first, by 18 years. Karl Benz patented the Motorwagen.

## Side by side

|  | the car | Monopoly |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1886 | 1904 |
| Date | 1886-01-29 | 1904-01-05 |
| Category | invention | media |
| What happened | Karl Benz patented the Motorwagen. | Lizzie Magie patented The Landlord's Game. |

## the car

Benz's patent of 29 January 1886 is the usual date for the first practical petrol car. The vehicle's commercial breakthrough came from his wife: in 1888 Bertha Benz drove 106 km to Pforzheim without telling him, fixing the fuel line with a hatpin and the ignition with a garter on the way, and the resulting publicity sold the machine. Ford did not exist until 1903 and the Model T not until 1908.

## Monopoly

Parker Brothers published Monopoly in 1935 and told the story of Charles Darrow, an unemployed man who invented it at his kitchen table. The truth is that Elizabeth Magie patented The Landlord's Game in 1904 — a nearly identical board designed to demonstrate how land monopolies impoverish tenants, which is precisely the opposite of the message the commercial version carries. Parker Brothers bought her patent for $500.

## Common questions

### Which came first, the car or Monopoly?

the car, by 18 years — 1886 against 1904.

### When did the car start?

1886. Karl Benz patented the Motorwagen.

### When did Monopoly start?

1904. Lizzie Magie patented The Landlord's Game.

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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]