Stock Exchange Actors and Their Ingenious Tools

Quotation Transmission Technologies and the Origins of Modern Market Organization
By Alex Preda
English

ON TICKS AND TAPES: FINANCIAL KNOWLEDGE, COMMUNICATIVE PRACTICES AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES IN 19TH CENTURY FINANCIAL MARKETS

The present paper examines the role played by price-recording technologies and financial knowledge in the organization of financial marketplaces in the late 19th century. Contrary to the widely held belief that the technologization of the marketplace began with the advent of the computer, the paper shows that this process began in the 1860s and continued uninterruptedly to our days. Two cases of market-tailored technologies are examined here, which were developed at about the same time on the Paris Bourse and the New York Stock Exchange: Castelli's 'pantelegraphe'? and Calahan's 'stock ticker.'? Starting from an analysis of the cognitive assumptions underlying their mode of functioning, the paper shows how the ticker triumphed while the pantelegraphe did not, in spite of some clear technical advantages. In the next step, the consequences of this triumph are highlighted: the cognitive frame and the organizational shape of the stock exchange were substantially changed. The data on which the author relies is provided by investors' manuals, brochures, newspaper articles, reports, stockbrokers' correspondence, and investors' diaries. The conclusion argues that the operational principles of the ticker have been continued and developed by financial computer screens in our days.

Keywords

Go to the article on Cairn-int.info