About
Ticker tape was a means of transmitting stock price information over telegraph lines 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. The concept of the stock ticker lives on in the scrolling electronic tickers on brokerage walls and financial television networks. 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. In 1867 Edward Calahan of the American Telegraph Company invented the first stock telegraph printing device. Early versions of stock tickers provided the first mechanical means of conveying stock prices over a long distance using telegraph wiring. 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. 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 occurred whenever the price changed. Stock Tickers became more effective much faster and stock 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 1880's 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. Stock ticker machines are an ancestor of the modern computer printer. Stock tickers were one of the first applications to transmit text over a wire to a printing device. Stock tickers in various buildings were connected using technology based on 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 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. The word ticker comes from the distinct 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. In 1996 a ticker type electronic device was produced that could operate in true real time. One of the most famous displays is the simulated ticker located at One Times Square in New York City. 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 shows whether the stock is trading higher or lower than the previous trade giving the terms downtick and uptick. Change amount refers to the difference in price from the previous day’s trading close. Many tickers today include color to indicate whether a stock is trading higher than the previous day’s - green, lower than previous day - red, or has remained unchanged - blue or white.
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