---
title: "Which came first, Harry Potter or Wikipedia?"
description: "Harry Potter vs Wikipedia: Harry Potter came first, by 4 years — 1997 against 2001. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/harry-potter-vs-wikipedia/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Harry Potter or Wikipedia?

**Which came first, Harry Potter or Wikipedia?: Harry Potter**

1997 — 4 years before Wikipedia

Harry Potter came first, by 4 years. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published in the UK.

## Side by side

|  | Harry Potter | Wikipedia |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1997 | 2001 |
| Date | 1997-06-26 | 2001-01-15 |
| Category | media | technology |
| What happened | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published in the UK. | Wikipedia launched as a side project to feed a different encyclopedia. |

## Harry Potter

Bloomsbury published the first book in June 1997 with a print run of 500 copies, most of which went to libraries, after twelve other publishers had rejected the manuscript. The company's chairman gave the first chapter to his eight-year-old daughter, who demanded the rest. It came out the same year as Netflix was founded and a year before Google.

## 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, Harry Potter or Wikipedia?

Harry Potter, by 4 years — 1997 against 2001.

### When did Harry Potter start?

1997. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published in the UK.

### 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]