A Brief History of the Bloomberg Terminal

What happened

From clipper ships transiting the oceans to telegraph wires connecting cities to fiber-optic cables conducting trades in microseconds , traders have embraced any advantage to get the most up-to-date information. In 1841, for example, the Mercantile Exchange (predecessor to Dun & Bradstreet) began selling proprietary business information to its U.S.

The following decade, Paul Julius Reuter began selling news services and stock price information. Financial markets have always relied on timely information, and the drive for timeliness has always adapted to the latest technology.

Indeed, the history of finance is really a story about how fast you can move information and who controls the interface. It’s only natural that people also figured out a way to profit by supplying that market intel.