Ticker tape
Encyclopedia
Ticker tape was the earliest digital electronic communications medium, transmitting stock
price information over telegraph lines, in use between around 1870 through 1970. It consisted of a paper strip which 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.
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.
Ticker tape was invented in 1867 by Edward A. Calahan, an employee of the American Telegraph Company.
was invented by David E. Hughes
in 1856. The first stock ticker system using a telegraphic printer was invented by Edward A. Calahan in 1863; he unveiled his device in New York City in 1867. 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 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 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.
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
. 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 one 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 was displayed on the ticker machine at the opposite end of the connection.
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 symbol
s (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. Pulses on the telegraph line made a letter wheel turn step by step until the right letter or 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 1 letter per second. 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.
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 network
s; 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).
, 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 cut into a form of confetti
, to be thrown from the windows above parade
s, primarily in lower Manhattan
; this became known as a ticker-tape parade
. 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 astronaut
s. Ticker tape was also incorporated into some of the innovative weaver Dorothy Liebes
' unusual art textiles.
Ticker tape parade
s 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 during these parade
s. The term is a reference to ticker tape parades of the past, which used actual ticker tape as confetti
.
Stock
The capital stock of a business entity represents the original capital paid into or invested in the business by its founders. It serves as a security for the creditors of a business since it cannot be withdrawn to the detriment of the creditors...
price information over telegraph lines, in use between around 1870 through 1970. It consisted of a paper strip which 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.
Paper ticker tape started to become obsolete in the 1960s, as television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
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.
Ticker tape was invented in 1867 by Edward A. Calahan, an employee of the American Telegraph Company.
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. A telegraphic printing systemPrinting telegraph
The Printing Telegraph was invented by Royal Earl House in 1846.The device was made by linking two 28-key piano-style keyboards by wire. Each piano key represented a letter of the alphabet and when pressed caused the corresponding letter to print at the receiving end. A "shift" key gave each main...
was invented by David E. Hughes
David E. Hughes
David Edward Hughes , was a British scientist and musician. Hughes was co-inventor of the microphone, a harpist and a professor of music.-Biography:...
in 1856. The first stock ticker system using a telegraphic printer was invented by Edward A. Calahan in 1863; he unveiled his device in New York City in 1867. 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
Morse code
Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...
as a medium for conveying messages. Previously, they 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 we think of as near real-time.
Stock ticker machines are an ancestor of the modern computer printer
Computer printer
In computing, a printer is a peripheral which produces a text or graphics of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are primarily used as local peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable or, in most new printers, a...
, being one of the first applications of transmitting text over a wire to a printing device
Teleprinter
A teleprinter is a electromechanical typewriter that can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point and point to multipoint over a variety of communication channels that range from a simple electrical connection, such as a pair of wires, to the use of radio and microwave as the...
, based on the printing telegraph
Printing telegraph
The Printing Telegraph was invented by Royal Earl House in 1846.The device was made by linking two 28-key piano-style keyboards by wire. Each piano key represented a letter of the alphabet and when pressed caused the corresponding letter to print at the receiving end. A "shift" key gave each main...
. One of the earliest practical stock ticker machines, the Universal Stock Ticker developed by Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
in 1869, had an alphanumeric
Alphanumeric
Alphanumeric is a combination of alphabetic and numeric characters, and is used to describe the collection of Latin letters and Arabic digits or a text constructed from this collection. There are either 36 or 62 alphanumeric characters. The alphanumeric character set consists of the numbers 0 to...
printing speed of approximately one character per second. A special typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
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.
Technology
Electrical telegraph
An electrical telegraph is a telegraph that uses electrical signals, usually conveyed via telecommunication lines or radio. The electromagnetic telegraph is a device for human-to-human transmission of coded text messages....
, with the advantage that the output was readable text, instead of the dots and dashes of Morse code
Morse code
Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...
. The machines printed a series of ticker symbol
Ticker symbol
A stock symbol or ticker symbol is a short abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. 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...
s (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. Pulses on the telegraph line made a letter wheel turn step by step until the right letter or 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 1 letter per second. 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.
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 network
Computer network
A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....
s; 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
News ticker
A news ticker resides in the lower third of the television screen space on television news networks dedicated to presenting headlines or minor pieces of news. It may also refer to a long, thin scoreboard-style display seen around the front of some offices or public buildings...
. One of the most famous displays is the simulated ticker located at One Times Square
One Times Square
One Times Square is a 25 story, 395 foot high skyscraper at 42nd Street and Broadway in 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
In the early days of baseballBaseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
, 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 cut into a form of confetti
Confetti
Confetti is a multitude of pieces of paper, mylar or metallic material which is usually thrown at parades and celebrations, especially weddings . Confetti is made in a variety of colors, and commercially available confetti is available in imaginative shapes...
, to be thrown from the windows above parade
Parade
A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of some kind...
s, primarily in lower Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
; this became known as a ticker-tape parade
Ticker-tape parade
A ticker-tape parade is a parade event held in a built-up urban setting, allowing large amounts of shredded paper to be thrown from nearby office buildings onto the parade route, creating a celebratory effect by the snowstorm-like flurry...
. Ticker tape parades generally celebrated some significant event, such as the end of a World War
World war
A world war is a war affecting the majority of the world's most powerful and populous nations. World wars span multiple countries on multiple continents, with battles fought in multiple theaters....
, or the safe return of one of the early astronaut
Astronaut
An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....
s. Ticker tape was also incorporated into some of the innovative weaver Dorothy Liebes
Dorothy Liebes
Dorothy Wright Liebes was an American textile designer and weaver renowned for her innovative, custom-designed modern fabrics for architects and interior designers. She was known as "the mother of modern weaving".- Early life :...
' unusual art textiles.
Ticker tape parade
Parade
A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of some kind...
s are still held in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, specifically in the "Canyon of Heroes" in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, most often when local sports teams win a championship. However, actual ticker tape is not used during these parade
Parade
A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of some kind...
s. The term is a reference to ticker tape parades of the past, which used actual ticker tape as confetti
Confetti
Confetti is a multitude of pieces of paper, mylar or metallic material which is usually thrown at parades and celebrations, especially weddings . Confetti is made in a variety of colors, and commercially available confetti is available in imaginative shapes...
.
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.
- Software emulating stock ticker tape on your desktop
- Telegraph History: Some Early Days of Western Union's Stock Ticker Service, 1871-1910 by Charles R. Tilghman