Thomas Alva Edison 1847-1931

"Be courageous! Whatever setbacks America has encountered, it has always emerged as a stronger and more prosperous nation.... Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith and go forward!" ------Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Edison began with telegraph equipment and had the talent to improve upon it. His enhancement of the Telegraph led to an invention that made Edison a lot of money, The Ticker-Tape which revolutionized Wall Street.

"The growth of this business is of great monument to the stock exchange, for it is through the instant dissemination of the quotations made on its floor that the active and continuous interest in the markets is sustained."
------ Horace L. Hotchkiss, 1867 One of the original founders of the Gold & Stock Telegraph Company

The Gold Indicator Company stock market ticker-tape machine was broken so they hired Thomas to fix it. He didn't only fix it, he improved it, selling a machine for printing stock exchange quotations to the Western Union for $40,000 (a lot of money back in those days). With this money, Thomas set up his inventing laboratory and hired staff.

"Edison's ticker tape was arguably the most profound advance in market technology prior to the Internet era." -----David Leinweber of Cal Tech.