---
title: "Which came first, LEGO or television?"
description: "LEGO vs television: television came first, by 7 years — 1925 against 1932. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/lego-vs-television/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, LEGO or television?

**Which came first, LEGO or television?: television**

1925 — 7 years before LEGO

television came first, by 7 years. Baird transmitted the first moving greyscale image.

## Side by side

|  | LEGO | television |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1932 | 1925 |
| Date | — | 1925-10-02 |
| Category | company | invention |
| What happened | Ole Kirk Christiansen started making wooden toys in Billund. | Baird transmitted the first moving greyscale image. |

## LEGO

The company began in 1932 making wooden toys; the name comes from leg godt, Danish for "play well". The interlocking plastic brick in its modern form was patented on 28 January 1958, and the tolerances have been held so precisely since that a brick made that day still clutches a brick made today. LEGO is now the largest tyre manufacturer in the world by unit count.

## television

John Logie Baird transmitted a recognisable moving image of a ventriloquist's dummy in October 1925 using a mechanical spinning-disc system. Philo Farnsworth demonstrated fully electronic television in 1927, and it was that approach, not Baird's, that every subsequent television used. Regular public broadcasting began in 1936, which means television is younger than the talking film and older than the ballpoint pen.

## Common questions

### Which came first, LEGO or television?

television, by 7 years — 1925 against 1932.

### When did LEGO start?

1932. Ole Kirk Christiansen started making wooden toys in Billund.

### When did television start?

1925. Baird transmitted the first moving greyscale image.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]
- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History — Smithsonian Institution (https://naturalhistory.si.edu/)