MUSEUM OF THE FALLEN
Dominance is not eternal.
The Wall/ Lost Technology/ Stock Ticker Tape
A mechanical stock ticker that printed price quotations onto a narrow paper tape.

Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain

Lost Technology

Stock Ticker Tape

1867 CE 1970 CE

A chattering brass machine that printed stock prices onto a ribbon of paper and, when spent, fluttered down as confetti over heroes.

Born
1867 CE
Died
1970 CE
Lived
103 years
Dead for
56 yrs
At its peak
Standard fixture of every brokerage and newspaper for nearly a century
Cause of death
Replaced
Replaced by
Electronic quotation systems and digital market data feeds
The Obituary

The stock ticker brought the market’s heartbeat into every brokerage. Invented by Edward Calahan in 1867 and improved by a young Thomas Edison, it received telegraph signals and printed abbreviated company symbols and prices onto a thin paper ribbon, the “ticker tape,” named for the sound it made. Clerks read the unspooling tape to follow trades minute by minute. The leftover paper found a second life: New Yorkers threw it from windows to celebrate heroes, inventing the ticker-tape parade. Electronic quote terminals and digital data feeds, faster and silent, displaced the paper tickers through the 1960s and 70s.

Worth remembering

  • Thomas Edison's improved 'Universal Stock Printer' funded his early career as an inventor.
  • Spent tape thrown from Manhattan windows created the original ticker-tape parade in 1886.

Sources

  1. Edward Calahan invented the stock ticker in 1867; Edison improved it Wikipedia
  2. Ticker-tape parades originated from discarded ticker paper in New York Wikipedia

A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.

Buried nearby
Dead Companies
Bethlehem Steel
1857 CE — 2003 CE
Dead Companies
Blockbuster
1985 CE — 2010 CE
Dead Companies
The Pullman Company
1867 CE — 1968 CE
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