---
title: "Which came first, the Ford Motor Company or Monopoly?"
description: "the Ford Motor Company vs Monopoly: the Ford Motor Company came first, by one year — 1903 against 1904. What happened in each case."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/ford-vs-monopoly/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, the Ford Motor Company or Monopoly?

**Which came first, the Ford Motor Company or Monopoly?: the Ford Motor Company**

1903 — one year before Monopoly

the Ford Motor Company came first, by one year. Ford Motor Company was incorporated in Detroit.

## Side by side

|  | the Ford Motor Company | Monopoly |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1903 | 1904 |
| Date | 1903-06-16 | 1904-01-05 |
| Category | company | media |
| What happened | Ford Motor Company was incorporated in Detroit. | Lizzie Magie patented The Landlord's Game. |

## the Ford Motor Company

Ford was incorporated in June 1903, fourteen years after Nintendo and six months before the Wright brothers flew. The Model T followed in 1908 and the moving assembly line in 1913, which cut the time to build a car from twelve hours to about ninety minutes. Ford was Henry Ford's third attempt at a car company; the first two failed.

## 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 Ford Motor Company or Monopoly?

the Ford Motor Company, by one year — 1903 against 1904.

### When did the Ford Motor Company start?

1903. Ford Motor Company was incorporated in Detroit.

### When did Monopoly start?

1904. Lizzie Magie patented The Landlord's Game.

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## Sources

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