---
title: "Which came first, Monopoly or television?"
description: "Monopoly vs television: Monopoly came first, by 21 years — 1904 against 1925. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/monopoly-vs-television/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Monopoly or television?

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

1904 — 21 years before television

Monopoly came first, by 21 years. Lizzie Magie patented The Landlord's Game.

## Side by side

|  | Monopoly | television |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1904 | 1925 |
| Date | 1904-01-05 | 1925-10-02 |
| Category | media | invention |
| What happened | Lizzie Magie patented The Landlord's Game. | Baird transmitted the first moving greyscale image. |

## 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.

## 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, Monopoly or television?

Monopoly, by 21 years — 1904 against 1925.

### When did Monopoly start?

1904. Lizzie Magie patented The Landlord's Game.

### 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/)