When the ticker tape was first invented in the 1860s, it promised a revolution in financial markets. Pricing information was now no longer solely the domain of the trading floor but was relayed continuously and simultaneously to ticker tapes long distances away from the stock exchange. Both nineteenth-century financiers, and the modern scholars who study them, have been enamored with the ticker tape and how it changed the way financial markets were perceived and experienced. However, a focus on how nineteenth-century financiers read and responded to the ticker tape has missed the real reordering of power that the ticker helped usher in. This article argues that between the 1860s and 1890s the London Stock Exchange and the Exchange Telegraph Company powerfully centralized their control over the distribution and transmission of financial information through the mundane infrastructures that underpinned the ticker tape system. Seeming technicalities, like the placement of batteries, the construction of electrical circuits, and the laying of wires and cables, were leveraged by these institutions to create a ticker tape system that distributed financial information unequally to financiers and investors throughout Britain. By the end of the nineteenth century, social and political questions about who should have access to financial information and markets, and on what terms, became helplessly intertwined with the mundane technicalities of the material infrastructures of modern finance.

在1860年代首次发明股票报价机时，它就预示着金融市场的一场革命。现在，定价信息不再仅仅是交易大厅的领域，而是连续不断地传递给距证券交易所很远的自动收报机。十九世纪的金融家和研究它们的现代学者都对股票代码以及它如何改变人们对金融市场的认识和体验的方式着迷。但是，专注于19世纪金融家如何阅读和响应股票行情的股票却错过了股票行情带来的真正权力重新排序。本文认为，在1860年代和1890年代之间，伦敦证券交易所和Exchange Telegraph Company通过其股票行情带系统的基础设施，对财务信息的分配和传输进行了强有力的集中控制。这些机构利用看似的技术，例如电池的放置，电路的构造以及电线和电缆的铺设，创建了一个自动收报机纸带系统，将金融信息不均等地分配给全英国的金融家和投资者。到19世纪末，关于谁应该获得金融信息和市场以及以什么条件使用的社会和政治问题与现代金融的实质性基础设施的世俗技术无奈地交织在一起。