Early Wall Street Press Photographs of Stock Ticker Machines, New York, circa 1910-1915

Early Stock Market Archive

Photograph

Wall St. c. 1910, four press photographs of stock ticker machines, ticker tape baskets, and men handling market quotations in New York financial offices, recording the telegraph-linked machinery that allowed Wall Street to turn prices into printed paper strips, the system used in the early 20th century to record transactions. In the photographs, early operations are shown through sticker tape as it spills from machines, accumulates in baskets, and passes through the hands of men reading the market in real time.

Photo archive of 4 Large silver gelatin press photographs, sizes range from approximately 8 x 10 inches to 4.5 x 6 inches, New York, circa 1910-1915. One photo depicts a stock ticker as it stands under a glass dome beside a tall wicker basket filled with discarded tape; in a second office interior, a suited man draws long strips of tape from a basket beside paneled teller windows and another dome-covered ticker. A ticker mechanism is mounted in a round housing, with tape spilling over the front edge of a cabinet and industrial pipes behind it. One photograph shows a crowded brokerage or financial office interior and men in dark suits and bowler hats gathered around ticker tape, reading and comparing strips beside ornate gas or electric fixtures, a radiator, and a large office cabinet. Versos bear Brown Brothers credit stamps, including “Photo by Brown Brothers,” and handwritten captions including “stock ticker,” “stock ticker ca 1910-15,” and “stock market.” Edward A. Calahan devised the first stock ticker in New York in 1867 for the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company, and Edison’s Universal Stock Printer of 1871 improved the speed and reliability of printed quotation delivery. Brown Brothers, founded in New York in 1904, supplied press and publication photographs, and the verso stamps here place these scenes within the commercial news-picture economy that distributed financial imagery to newspapers and magazines. The group contains machines printing quotations, tape accumulating in baskets, and men reading or handling the strips that carried market prices.

Before electronic quotation screens, brokers and newspapers depended on telegraph-linked ticker machines to turn trades into printed symbols, prices, and volume figures; the paper strip remained a central financial medium into the twentieth century before electronic systems displaced it. Some curling and age wear with adhesive en versos; overall in good condition. These photographs predate the 1929 stock market crash by roughly 15 years, and show when these financial rooms contained ticker machines producing market information, and how early Wall St. men dressed and operated reading the strips.

Item #23516

Price: $585.00