Antique Stock Tickers    Stock Ticker Census

The Burry Stock Ticker

This stock ticker was invented by John Burry in 1914 and is referred to as the "Burry Ticker". The patents were owned by the Stock Quotation Telegraph Company. They had an earlier ticker invented by a man named Wirshing or Worisching. Those are probably the older 1895 and 1897 patents referred to on the ticker, along side the 1914 patents. John Burry made the mechanism lighter and added a self-winding feature.

These Burry machines were manufactured by O. F. Ehrle of New York for the Stock Quotation Telegraph Company at cost of $32.00 each.   Stock Quotation then leased them monthly to Western Union for $3.00 each.

Western Union used them from about 1914 to 1922 in Chicago, Washington DC, Baltimore, Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Boston and several other cities. Not many appeared in New York City, because the NYQ Ticker had monopolized much of Wall Street at that time.

It's been said that there were about 12,000 of the Burry Tickers made. This seems to trace back to only one website, but their calculations are off.  By the ratios they used, the total would only be 972 Burrys made.  I believe the number to be in the 1000 to 3000 range.

After 1922, Western Union's newer and faster Self-Winding-Ticker began replacing most of these older machines.

Burry Ticker & Stand