Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1901-07-19
STOCK TICKER.
In Wall st. is Printed the oldest
Newspaper in the United States.


in and goes out with the uncertain tide
Of Wall st. Newspapers twice a day.
bulletins every 10 minutes. tape all the
time-thus the money field is irrigated
with the news.
The oldest of Wall st. newspapers is
printed on presses small enough to De
carried in a hatboX. These presses are
kept in glass cases. like wax flowers. or
ship models. or crown jewels, and are
known as tickers. The Tape is issued
every business day, and five hours. ~
to 3, are required to print each issue.
When the issue is all printed, it is as
long as two city blocks, but only as
wide as a postage stamp.
Each issue of The Tape contains
from 5000 to 1000 complete short stories
called quotations, representing stock
transactions. Its editor is keen-wit-
ted man named Bamford. His staf
consists of 20 reporters and teleg-
raphers. Look sharp when you visit
the stock exchange and you can recog-
nize these Tape reporters-they are the
only men on the floor with gold braid
on their caps. Each has to report the
transactions in from to 20 stocks. ac-
cording to their activity.
The instant sale is made ne scrib-
bles on a pad something about as I'M
Ineligible as a doctors prescription.
tears off the sheet and hands it to the
nearest telegrapher. An expert teleg-
rapher is stationed at each of the four
corners of the exchange. The same
second in which q reporter hands over
a memorandum of a sale the operators
clicks il off on a Morse instrument.
thus transmitting it to Il room at the
Ton of the tower of the produce eX-
change-for it must be remembered
that the stock exchange, while build
ing its new home is occupying a part
of the produce exchange floor.
ONLY TWO seconds of time have passed
and we now have the record of the sale
in the tower room. Here nine men are
punched together at the elbows around
T-shaped table. They are mighty
serious lot No talking is the rule.
Here is the silence of public library
and the solemnity of secret meeting
of anarchists. But they are merely
telegraph operators with their ears
close to instruments that chant the
doings of men on change below.
Here are two instruments for each Of
message coming thus over two wires to
two men. so that if one receiver misses
n transaction. his mate has caught it.
and there s'nO necessity for the opera
tor below to repeat. This accounts for
eight of the nine men in that solemn
gang in the tower. The ninth sits at a
keyboard, a sort of typewriter, and as
fast as the Morse receivers hand him
-. ~ h.,
KEYS of his queer looking typewriters
and thus transmits the quotation from
his sky high room to the central office
in the basement of Is Broadway, a
block or so from the exchange.
Four seconds have passed: two sec
onds more and the quotation Will come
out on the tape in the offices Of thou
sand members Of the stock exchange
In the central office man sits at ar
electric typewriter corresponding to the
one in the tower. The same instant IN
which he receives quotation from the
tower man the central man presses
keys, or electric buttons. which con-
meet with 40 circuits of % wires each
hence when he presses the keys of his
typewriter he prints the quotation or
1000 tickers at once. Thus, six seconds
after sale, bid or an offer on the
floor" particulars are known not only
in the offices of 1000 members OF thu
exchange. but in the offices, as Well, o.
1000 nom members in New York. Brook
lyn and Jersey City.
The 20O0 tickers are fed thus: one
half by the stock exchange, which SUD
plies only members, and only those
moreover, having offices south o
Chambers St: the second thousand /
supplied by the Western Union tele
graph company to non members souti
Of chambers St. and to any subscrib
er. whether a member or non-membei
north of the same street
In addition to the tickers within tn
city limits the telegraph company sup
plies thousands of other tickers in cite
all over the union. and cables quota
tions beside to the chief cities of Eu
rope. Each city has its central Office
of course, with it's electric typewrite
as in New York. Thus, like lightning
flash, the news of each stock eXchang'
transaction is spread over two cont
ncnts in a single continuous column o
that remarkable newspaper. The Tape
The doings of the consolidated eX
change. the junior stock exchange. 81
to sneak are recorded in exactly th'
same way-only The Tape of the Con
solidated has not so general cIrcula
ton. The business of the produce. cot
ton. coffee and other exchanges, as vel
as the trading in leather and petro
leum and other markets. is given pub
ucity by the news bureau.
The bureaus which engage in tn
process of tightening the financial dis
trict are located almost side by side OF
Broad street.-the of them friendl!
rivals.
1t is these bureaus. then, and not tn
newspapers. Upon which Wall stree
relies for earliest information. Tel
minutes after q foreign country call
for loan. five minutes after an Al
bany strike is settled. the new
bureaus make the facts known to wal
street Information is sent out. first
by q news tape: second. by system
Of printed bulletins delivered by boys
and known as 'slip service" New
tape is operated by an electric type
writing machine. practically the sam
as a stock tape. but there is goo
deal more to II. For news tape is a
wide as two newspaper columns, am
instead of containing characters un