November 15:

1867 : First stock ticker debuts

On this day in 1867, the first stock ticker is
unveiled in New York City. The advent of the ticker
ultimately revolutionized the stock market by making
up-to-the-minute prices available to investors around
the country. Prior to this development, information
from the New York Stock Exchange, which has been
around since 1792, traveled by mail or messenger.

The ticker was the brainchild of Edward Calahan, who
configured a telegraph machine to print stock quotes
on streams of paper tape (the same paper tape later
used in ticker-tape parades). The ticker, which caught
on quickly with investors, got its name from the sound
its type wheel made.

Calahan worked for the Gold & Stock Telegraph Company,
which rented its tickers to brokerage houses and
regional exchanges for a fee and then transmitted the
latest gold and stock prices to all its machines at
the same time. In 1869, Thomas Edison, a former
telegraph operator, patented an improved,
easier-to-use version of Calahan's ticker. Edison's
ticker was his first lucrative invention and, through
the manufacture and sale of stock tickers and other
telegraphic devices, he made enough money to open his
own lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey, where he developed
the light bulb and phonograph, among other
transformative inventions.

The last mechanical stock ticker debuted in 1960 and
was eventually replaced by computerized tickers with
electronic displays. A ticker shows a stock's symbol,
how many shares have traded that day and the price per
share. It also tells how much the price has changed
from the previous day's closing price and whether it's
an up or down change. A common misconception is that
there is one ticker used by everyone. In fact, private
data companies run a variety of tickers; each provides
information about a select mix of stocks.

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