The Wall Street Journal is a long-standing news institution. It has been in continuous print since July 8, 1889. Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser created the periodical. Some of those names may be familiar to you. Dow went on to found the Dow Jones stock market index, a widely used measure of the performance of the stocks markets. Edward Jones is a prominent investment firm that is still owned by the family that founded it in 1945. Charles Bergstresser was an attorney who left his job at a large New York law firm to start his own practice. He eventually had enough success that he could retire three years later and spend more time writing and traveling. Charles Dow was an American economist who invented the concept of "the stock market" as we know it today. At the time, this was quite novel; before his death in 1911, almost all trading was done in physical commodities like gold and silver. Dow is best known for creating the Dow Jones industrial average, which is based on the prices of selected companies. This formula was originally devised by Dow's colleague Edward Jones to compare the profitability of factories across America. It is now commonly used to compare the relative strength of countries' economies. Edward Jones is a well-known investment company that was founded in 1883 by Edward Jones III. In 1945, the company launched a new publication called the Wall Street Journal, which is still published today.