The greater speed and reliability of steamships and railways meant that people were no longer waiting years or months for shipments to come - but rather weeks or days.
The rise of telecommunications with the telegraph meant the new faster transport could be harnessed and exploited in markets that moved more efficiently and rapidly. For the first time, detailed information about shipments could be sent faster than the goods themselves.
See also Edward Calahan.
Within four years of commercial telegraphy starting in the UK over 50 per cent of all telegraph messages concerned stock market and commodity prices. For the rest of the 19th century, financial trading information provided the backbone of telegraph traffic. Investors, traders, manufacturers and resellers all recognised the value of the telegraph.
Other trades were also quick to benefit from the telegraph using it to collect market information, react to it and secure the most profitable deals. The Aberdeen fish trade, the iron trade of Glasgow and Middlesbrough and the Channel Islands potato trade all adopted the telegraph.
Such was the importance of up-to-date prices that the Exchange Telegraph Company was formed in 1872 to report and distribute stock exchange news and for many decades afterwards its 'ticker tape' printer machines were a familiar sight in banks, hotels and gentlemen's clubs.
The machine sat on a plinth and was covered with a glass dome, to reduce noise. The tape was fed into a basket through a hole in the glass, storing information for people to refer to later.
