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Show HOW STORY OF STOCKS IS TOLD A Many Men and Machines Used, but Faster System Sys-tem Is Coming. New York. The inadequacy of the present stock ticker that complicated com-plicated apparatus which flashes the news of transactions on the floors of the exchanges to brokers' offices all over the country was again forcibly demonstrated recently recent-ly when all Wall Street's trading records were smnshed. One day, for instance, when 1G,410,030 shares were traded in on the New York Stock Exchange, the tape sent out its last price at 5 :32 o'clock for a market which closed at three. On a previous day the last transaction was recorded after seven o'clock. Yet the present system and apparatus appa-ratus is considered a marvel of ingenuity, in-genuity, for many steps are Involved In-volved between the time the customer cus-tomer places his order and the time when news of the completed transaction trans-action Is flashed far and wide. Course of a Transaction. The customer telephones a "customers' "cus-tomers' man" at his brokerage office, ordering, say, 100 shares of United States Steel at the market. This is jotted down on a slip of paper pa-per "Buy 100 X mkt" and sent to the brokerage wire room. Here a telephone call is made to the floor of the Stock Exchange, calling call-ing for the "floor member" of the firm. The floor member's number is shown on one of the huge annunciator an-nunciator boards, calling him to the telephone. Getting the order, he goes to the Steel post, may try to get a better price than that which is at the moment ruling for the stock, gives his offers in fractions frac-tions of a dollar until another broker says "Sold." The transaction is then made, each man jotting it down and sending send-ing it to his firm for recording. Then comes the business of flashing flash-ing the news of the sale. Record of the sale is made by reporters, employees of the New York Stock Exchange. The reporter report-er writes on a slip of paper the stock, number of shares and price. He takes the record to the nearest of six ticker units located at different dif-ferent sections of the floor. Here are a number of men who operate keyboards resembling typewriter keyboards. They take down the transaction, punching keys which perforate a tape. How the Ticker Works. The tape is passed through boxes that have teeth that make contacts where there are holes, or fail to make contact where the tape is un-penetrated. un-penetrated. A little wheel on which is inscribed all the letters of the alphabet and numbers and fractions of numbers receives electrical elec-trical impulses from the perforated tape and thus selects the characters charac-ters which are to be printed to make the transaction known to the world. In the gallery of the Stock Exchange Ex-change is another group of men who work at a control board nnd whose business it Is to watch over the recording by the floor operators, opera-tors, make corrections if necessary, and keep one unit of the ticker system from getting ahead of the others. About five transactions are taken from one unit, then five from the next, nnd In order they are sent along by underground cable to an office at P2 Broadway. If one unit Is found to be five minutes behind be-hind the actual market transactions transac-tions and another unit seven minutes min-utes behind, time is given to the lagging one to catch up. Electrical impulses are then carried car-ried to brokerage offices maintaining maintain-ing the service In Lower Manhattan Manhat-tan sonth of Chambers street, about 3.5(H) in nil. The Western Union Telegraph company sends the quotations to about G.000 other offices, located In New York above Chambers street, in other parts of the country nnd abroad. Machines at the brokerage offices, using a tape of a cellulose compound, re-tlect re-tlect the prices as they appear on a lighted screen. The Nsw Ticker. At the present time the Stock Exchange is using two types of transmitling tickers, a new type having been brought out about a year ago. The latter, according to the New York Quotation company, is capable of keeping records of transactions up to the minute on a 7,000,000-sharo day, provided the pales are fairly evenly divided, that ll, provided there are no great peaks ef trading. The receiving part of this new ticker keyed down to the pace of the old ticker tick-er has been installed in about 200 downtown offices, nnd more are being put in as rapidly as possible. pos-sible. But until all the offices some 10,000 are equipped with the new tickers, it cannot be used at its high speed by the brokers, for some would then get quotations ahead of others. The new machine will print about 500 impressions a minute simultaneously simul-taneously all over the country, while the old machine prints only about 2S0 characters a minute. The mechanical difference between the two is that the old ticker stops its selection of characters while it is printing a character, while the new "Teletype" prints and selects at the same time. Driven by Motor. The new ticker comprises an electric motor whose speed is controlled con-trolled by an adjustable governor. The motor drives two shafts, a selecting se-lecting shaft and a printing shaft. The characters to be printed are determined by the conjoint action of the selecting shaft and a" controlling con-trolling magnet operated by a transmitter. During a revolution of the selecting se-lecting shaft it connects a series of six latches to a line magnet operated operat-ed by the transmitter. If the magnet mag-net is operated at the time when any latch is connected thereto, the latch will be tripped. But, if the Hue magnet Is not operated at this time, the latch will not be tripped. The operation of the magnet is controlled directly by the transmitter transmit-ter by means of the perforations in the tape previously prepared by means of the operators. For example, ex-ample, if in the tape the first and second latches are performed the first and second latches are tripped, thereby selecting the letter A. When rotation is completed the selection se-lection is transferred to a set of selecting disks which release the type wheel driven by the other shaft and set a stop. This stops the type wheel at the letter A in a printing position, where it Is printed by the printing shaft In the meanwhile the selecting shaft has been started in rotation to select se-lect the next desired character. |