Stock Ticker

Edison, Thomas Alva · 1873

Until the decade of the 1990s, when traders adopted the Internet, tickers provided vital stock market information to businesses and news organizations. Stock tickers were a special type of telegraph receiver designed to print an alphabetical company symbol and the current price of that company’s stock on a paper roll called ticker tape. Thomas Edison made his early reputation as an inventor by designing an improved stock ticker for the Gold & Stock Telegraph Company. The company submitted this ticker to the U.S. Patent Office during the process leading to the issue of patent number 140,488 in 1873 .