Ticker tape was the earliest electrical dedicated financial communications medium, transmitting stock price information over telegraph lines, in use from around 1870 to 1970. It consisted of a paper strip that ran through a machine called a stock ticker, which printed abbreviated company names as alphabetic symbols followed by numeric stock transaction price and volume information. The term "ticker" came from the sound made by the machine as it printed.
The ticker tape revolutionized financial markets, as it relayed information from trading floors continuously and simultaneously across geographical distances. [1] Paper ticker tape became obsolete in the 1960s, as television and computers were increasingly used to transmit financial information. The concept of the stock ticker lives on, however, in the scrolling electronic tickers seen on brokerage walls and on news and financial television channels.
Ticker tape stock price telegraphs were invented in 1867 by Edward A. Calahan, an employee of the American Telegraph Company who later founded The ADT Corporation. [2] [3]
Although telegraphic printing systems were invented by Royal Earl House in 1846, early models were fragile, required hand-cranked power, frequently went out of synchronization between sender and receiver, and did not become popular in widespread commercial use. David E. Hughes improved the printing telegraph design with clockwork weight power in 1856, [4] and his design was further improved and became viable for commercial use when George M. Phelps devised a resynchronization system in 1858. [5] The first stock price ticker system using a telegraphic printer was invented by Edward A. Calahan in 1863; he unveiled his device in New York City on November 15, 1867. [6] [7] [8] Early versions of stock tickers provided the first mechanical means of conveying stock prices ("quotes"), over a long distance via telegraph wiring. In its infancy, the ticker used the same symbols as Morse code as a medium for conveying messages. One of the earliest practical stock ticker machines, the Universal Stock Ticker developed by Thomas Edison in 1869, used alphanumeric characters with a printing speed of approximately one character per second.
Previously, stock prices had been hand-delivered via written or verbal messages. Since the useful time-span of individual quotes is very brief, they generally had not been sent long distances; aggregated summaries, typically for one day, were sent instead. The increase in speed provided by the ticker allowed for faster and more exact sales. Since the ticker ran continuously, updates to a stock's price whenever the price changed became effective much faster and trading became a more time-sensitive matter. For the first time, trades were being done in what is now thought of as near real-time.
By the 1880s, there were about a thousand stock tickers installed in the offices of New York bankers and brokers. In 1890, members of the exchange agreed to create the New York Quotation Co., buying up all other ticker companies to ensure accuracy of reporting of price and volume activity. [9]
Stock ticker machines are an ancestor of the modern computer printer, being one of the first applications of transmitting text over a wire to a printing device, based on the printing telegraph. This used the technology of the then-recently invented telegraph machines, with the advantage that the output was readable text, instead of the dots and dashes of Morse code. A special typewriter designed for operation over telegraph wires was used at the opposite end of the telegraph wire connection to the ticker machine. Text typed on the typewriter was displayed on the ticker machine at the opposite end of the connection.
The machines printed a series of ticker symbols (usually shortened forms of a company's name), followed by brief information about the price of that company's stock; the thin strip of paper on which they were printed was called ticker tape. The word ticker comes from the distinct tapping (or ticking) noise the machines made while printing. Pulses on the telegraph line made a letter wheel turn step by step until the correct symbol was reached and then printed. A typical 32-symbol letter wheel had to turn on average 15 steps until the next letter could be printed resulting in a very slow printing speed of one character per second. [10] In 1883, ticker transmitter keyboards resembled the keyboard of a piano with black keys indicating letters and the white keys indicating numbers and fractions, corresponding to two rotating type wheels in the connected ticker tape printers. [11]
Newer and more efficient tickers became available in the 1930s, but these newer and better tickers still had an approximate 15- to 20-minute delay. Ticker machines became obsolete in the 1960s, replaced by computer networks; none have been manufactured for use for decades. However, working reproductions of at least one model are now being manufactured for museums and collectors. [12]
Simulated ticker displays, named after the original machines, still exist as part of the display of television news channels and on some websites—see news ticker. One of the most famous outdoor displays is the simulated ticker scrolling marquee called "The Zipper" located at One Times Square in New York City.
Ticker tapes then and now contain generally the same information. The ticker symbol is a unique set of characters used to identify the company. The shares traded is the volume for the trade being quoted. Price traded refers to the price per share of a particular trade. Change direction is a visual cue showing whether the stock is trading higher or lower than the previous trade, hence the terms downtick and uptick . Change amount refers to the difference in price from the previous day's closing. Many today include color to indicate whether a stock is trading higher than the previous day's (green), lower than previous (red), or has remained unchanged (blue or white).
In the early days of baseball, before electronic scoreboards, manual score turners used a ticker to get the latest scores from around the league. Today, computers and electronic scoreboards have replaced the manual scoreboard and the ticker.
Used ticker tape was repurposed as confetti, to be thrown from the windows above parades either cut up into scraps or thrown as whole spools, primarily in lower Manhattan; this became known as a ticker tape parade. [13] Ticker tape parades generally celebrated some significant event, such as the end of World War I and World War II, or the safe return of one of the early astronauts.
Ticker tape parades are still held in New York City, specifically in the "Canyon of Heroes" in Manhattan, most often when local sports teams win a championship. However, actual ticker tape is not used any longer during these parades; often, pieces of paper from paper shredders are used as a convenient source of confetti.
Ticker tape was also incorporated into some of the weaver Dorothy Liebes' unusual art textiles. [14]
The Baudot code is an early character encoding for telegraphy invented by Émile Baudot in the 1870s. It was the predecessor to the International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 (ITA2), the most common teleprinter code in use before ASCII. Each character in the alphabet is represented by a series of five bits, sent over a communication channel such as a telegraph wire or a radio signal by asynchronous serial communication. The symbol rate measurement is known as baud, and is derived from the same name.
A mimeograph machine was a low-cost duplicating machine that worked by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. The process was called mimeography, and a copy made by the process was a mimeograph.
A teleprinter is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations.
A ticker symbol or stock symbol is an abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. In short, ticker symbols are arrangements of symbols or characters representing specific assets or securities listed on a stock exchange or traded publicly. A stock symbol may consist of letters, numbers, or a combination of both. "Ticker symbol" refers to the symbols that were printed on the ticker tape of a ticker tape machine.
Typesetting is the composition of text for publication, display, or distribution by means of arranging physical type in mechanical systems or glyphs in digital systems representing characters. Stored types are retrieved and ordered according to a language's orthography for visual display. Typesetting requires one or more fonts. One significant effect of typesetting was that authorship of works could be spotted more easily, making it difficult for copiers who have not gained permission.
Stationery refers to commercially manufactured writing materials, including cut paper, envelopes, writing implements, continuous form paper, and other office supplies. Stationery includes materials to be written on by hand or by equipment such as computer printers.
A ticker-tape parade is a parade event held in an urban setting, characterized by large amounts of shredded paper thrown onto the parade route from the surrounding buildings, creating a celebratory flurry of paper. Originally, actual ticker tape was used, but now mostly confetti is substituted.
Confetti are small pieces or streamers of paper, mylar, or metallic material which are usually thrown at celebrations, especially parades and weddings. The origins are from the Latin confectum, with confetti the plural of Italian confetto, small sweet. Modern paper confetti trace back to symbolic rituals of tossing grains and sweets during special occasions, traditional for numerous cultures throughout history as an ancient custom dating back to pagan times, but adapted from sweets and grains to paper through the centuries. Confetti are manufactured in multiple colors, and commercially available confetti come in many different shapes. A distinction is made between confetti and glitter; glitter is smaller than confetti and is universally shiny. Most table confetti is also shiny. While they are called metallic confetti they are actually metallized PVC. Most party supply stores carry paper and metallic confetti. Confetti are commonly used at social gatherings such as parties, weddings, and Bar Mitzvahs. The simplest confetti are simply shredded paper, and can be made with scissors or a paper shredder. Chads punched out of scrap paper are also common. A hole punch makes small round chads, and a ticket punch makes more elaborate chads. Most pieces of paper flats will flutter as tumblewings giving long flight times.
A news ticker is a horizontal or vertical text-based display either in the form of a graphic that typically resides in the lower third of the screen space on a television station or network or as a long, thin scoreboard-style display seen around the facades of some offices or public buildings dedicated to presenting headlines or minor pieces of news. It is an evolution of the ticker tape, a continuous paper print-out of stock quotes from a printing telegraph which was mainly used in stock exchanges before the advance of technology in the 1960s.
Trans-Lux is a company that specializes in designing, selling, leasing, and maintaining multi-color, real-time data and LED large-screen electronic information displays, but is primarily known as a major supplier of national stock ticker displays for stock exchanges. These indoor and outdoor displays are used worldwide in many industries, including banking, gaming, corporate, retail, healthcare, sports, transportation and in the financial industry.
ADT Inc., formerly The ADT Corporation, is an American security company that provides residential and small business electronic security, fire protection, and other related alarm monitoring services throughout the United States. The corporate head office is located in Boca Raton, Florida. In February 2016, the company was acquired by Apollo Global Management for $6.9 billion in a leveraged buyout. In January 2018, the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange.
The Teletype Model 33 is an electromechanical teleprinter designed for light-duty office use. It is less rugged and cost less than earlier Teletype models. The Teletype Corporation introduced the Model 33 as a commercial product in 1963, after it had originally been designed for the United States Navy. The Model 33 was produced in three versions:
A label is a piece of paper, plastic film, cloth, metal, or other material affixed to a container or product, on which is written or printed information or symbols about the product or item. Information printed directly on a container or article can also be considered labelling.
Franklin Leonard Pope was an American engineer, explorer, and inventor.
The Teletype Corporation, a part of American Telephone and Telegraph Company's Western Electric manufacturing arm since 1930, came into being in 1928 when the Morkrum-Kleinschmidt Company changed its name to the name of its trademark equipment. Teletype was responsible for the research, development and manufacture of data and record communications equipment, but it is primarily remembered for the manufacture of electromechanical teleprinters.
Edward Ernst Kleinschmidt was a German-American engineer. He was one of the inventors of the teleprinter, and obtained 118 patents over the course of his lifetime.
The printing telegraph was invented by Royal Earl House in 1846. House's telegraph could transmit around 40 instantly readable words per minute, but was difficult to manufacture in bulk. The printer could copy and print out up to 2,000 words per hour. This invention was first put in operation and exhibited at the Mechanics Institute in New York.
George May Phelps was a 19th-century American inventor of automated telegraphy equipment. He is credited with synthesizing the designs of several existing printers into his line of devices which became the dominant apparatus for automated reception and transmission of telegraph messages.
Stock market data systems communicate market data—information about securities and stock trades—from stock exchanges to stockbrokers and stock traders.
Edward Augustin Calahan (1838–1912) was an American inventor, credited with invention of a ticker tape, gold and stock tickers, and a multiplex telegraph system.