---
title: "Which came first, Samsung or television?"
description: "Samsung vs television: television came first, by 13 years — 1925 against 1938. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/samsung-vs-television/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Samsung or television?

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

1925 — 13 years before Samsung

television came first, by 13 years. Baird transmitted the first moving greyscale image.

## Side by side

|  | Samsung | television |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1938 | 1925 |
| Date | 1938-03-01 | 1925-10-02 |
| Category | company | invention |
| What happened | Lee Byung-chul opened a trading company in Daegu, Korea. | Baird transmitted the first moving greyscale image. |

## Samsung

Samsung began in 1938 as a grocery trading company dealing in dried fish, vegetables and noodles, which it exported to Manchuria. It moved into textiles, insurance and retail before making its first electronic product — a black-and-white television — in 1970. The name means "three stars".

## 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, Samsung or television?

television, by 13 years — 1925 against 1938.

### When did Samsung start?

1938. Lee Byung-chul opened a trading company in Daegu, Korea.

### 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/)