---
title: "Which came first, McDonald's or television?"
description: "McDonald's vs television: television came first, by 15 years — 1925 against 1940. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/mcdonalds-vs-television/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, McDonald's or television?

**Which came first, McDonald's or television?: television**

1925 — 15 years before McDonald's

television came first, by 15 years. Baird transmitted the first moving greyscale image.

## Side by side

|  | McDonald's | television |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1940 | 1925 |
| Date | — | 1925-10-02 |
| Category | company | invention |
| What happened | Richard and Maurice McDonald opened a restaurant in San Bernardino. | Baird transmitted the first moving greyscale image. |

## McDonald's

The brothers opened in 1940 as a barbecue drive-in and reinvented it in 1948 with the Speedee Service System — a tiny menu, no waiters, food assembled on a production line. The company itself dates its founding to 15 April 1955, when Ray Kroc opened his franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois. Both dates are defensible and the corporate one is not the restaurant one.

## 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, McDonald's or television?

television, by 15 years — 1925 against 1940.

### When did McDonald's start?

1940. Richard and Maurice McDonald opened a restaurant in San Bernardino.

### When did television start?

1925. Baird transmitted the first moving greyscale image.

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## Sources

- Typical range compiled from manufacturer specifications — At One Place (/about/)
- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History — Smithsonian Institution (https://naturalhistory.si.edu/)