---
title: "Which came first, Star Wars or Wikipedia?"
description: "Star Wars vs Wikipedia: Star Wars came first, by 24 years — 1977 against 2001. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/star-wars-vs-wikipedia/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Star Wars or Wikipedia?

**Which came first, Star Wars or Wikipedia?: Star Wars**

1977 — 24 years before Wikipedia

Star Wars came first, by 24 years. The first film opened in 32 American cinemas.

## Side by side

|  | Star Wars | Wikipedia |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1977 | 2001 |
| Date | 1977-05-25 | 2001-01-15 |
| Category | media | technology |
| What happened | The first film opened in 32 American cinemas. | Wikipedia launched as a side project to feed a different encyclopedia. |

## Star Wars

Star Wars opened in May 1977 on fewer than forty screens because the distributor had little faith in it, and it went on to be the highest-grossing film made to that point. Fox let Lucas keep the merchandising and sequel rights in exchange for a lower directing fee, a decision that transferred an extraordinary amount of money. It is eleven years younger than Star Trek.

## 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, Star Wars or Wikipedia?

Star Wars, by 24 years — 1977 against 2001.

### When did Star Wars start?

1977. The first film opened in 32 American cinemas.

### 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]