---
title: "Which came first, the Ford Motor Company or Nintendo?"
description: "the Ford Motor Company 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/ford-vs-nintendo/
site: "At One Place"
---

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

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

1889 — 14 years before the Ford Motor Company

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

## Side by side

|  | the Ford Motor Company | Nintendo |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1903 | 1889 |
| Date | 1903-06-16 | 1889-09-23 |
| Category | company | company |
| What happened | Ford Motor Company was incorporated in Detroit. | Fusajiro Yamauchi began making hanafuda playing cards in Kyoto. |

## 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.

## 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 Ford Motor Company or Nintendo?

Nintendo, by 14 years — 1889 against 1903.

### When did the Ford Motor Company start?

1903. Ford Motor Company was incorporated in Detroit.

### When did Nintendo start?

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

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## Sources

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