ticker tape

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Ticker tape was a means of transmitting stock price information over telegraph lines, in use between around 1870 and 1970. It consisted of a paper strip which ran through a machine called a stock ticker, which printed abbreviated company symbols followed by price and volume information.

Paper ticker tape started to become 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 financial television networks.

History

The term "ticker tape" came from the sound made by the machine as it printed, and tape simply refers to the machines using a paper tape printout as a rolling display of stock prices.^[1] In 1867, Edward A. Calahan of the American Telegraph Company invented the first stock telegraph printing device.^[2] Early versions of stock tickers provided the first mechanical means of conveying stock prices ("quotes"), over a long distance over telegraph wiring. In its infancy, the ticker used the same symbols as Morse code as a medium for conveying messages. Previously, they were 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 we think 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. in order to buy up all other ticker companies. The move was done to provide accuracy of reporting of price and volume activity.^[3]

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. One of the earliest practical stock ticker machines, the Universal Stock Ticker developed by Thomas Edison in 1869, had an alphanumeric printing speed of approximately 1 character per second. 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 got displayed on the ticker machine at the opposite end of the connection.

Technology

Edison gold & stock ticker.

Stock tickers in various buildings were connected using technology based on the then-recently invented telegraph machines, with the advantage that the output was readable text, instead of the dots and dashes of Morse code. 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 they were printed on was called ticker tape. As with all these terms, the word ticker comes from the distinct tapping (or ticking) noise the machines made while printing.

Newer and more efficient tickers became available in the 1930s and 1960s but the physical ticker tape phase was quickly coming to a close being followed by the electronic phase. These newer and better tickers still had an approximate 15 to 20 minute delay. Stock 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. It was not until 1996 that a ticker type electronic device was produced that could operate in true real time.

Simulated ticker displays, named after the original machines, still exist as part of the display of television news channels and on some World Wide Web pages—see news ticker. One of the most famous displays is the simulated ticker 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. These are reflected in the modern style tickers that we see every day. 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).

Other usage

Ticker-tape parade in New York City in honor of the Apollo 11 astronauts, August 1969

Used ticker tape was cut into a form of confetti, to be thrown from the windows above parades, primarily in lower Manhattan; this became known as a ticker-tape parade.^[4] Ticker tape parades generally celebrated some significant event, such as the end of a World War, or the safe return of one of the early astronauts. Ticker tape was also incorporated into some of the innovative weaver Dorothy Liebes' unusual art textiles.^[5]

Notes

See also

• Commodity tick

External links

• Exchanges - Ticker Tape Terminology The Investment FAQ. 19 September 1999. 20 April 2007
• Understanding the Ticker Tape (symbols) Investopedia 25 February 2005 20 April 2007
• Thomas Edison's Ticker Tape Patent
• Ticker Tape Digest (brief history of the ticker tape)
• IEEE Global History Network: The Stock Ticker
• WorldWideSchool: Edison and the Stock Ticker
• The Stock Ticker Company: History of ticker machines.