A brief history of the Bloomberg terminal(spectrum.ieee.org)
378 points by rbanffy 13 days ago | 168 comments
tl;dr: Michael Bloomberg launched the Market Master terminal in 1982 through Innovative Market Systems, initially selling to Merrill Lynch, by integrating real-time financial data with quantitative analysis tools on a dedicated terminal with a custom color-coded "Chiclet" keyboard and private network. The product expanded over decades to include news, chat, multimedia, and biometric login, and in 2000 the company dropped dedicated hardware in favor of software running on customer PCs. Subscriptions now run upwards of $32,000/year, and retired keyboards—including one from "Bond King" Bill Gross with his password taped on it—now reside in the Smithsonian.
HN Discussion:
  • ↑Admiration for the terminal's information density and UI design
  • •Technical additions about the terminal's architecture and backwards compatibility
  • ↓Criticism of Bloomberg's restrictive hardware login requirements driving users away
  • ~Requests for more content (screenshots, fonts) missing from the article
  • •Sharing related resources about competitors and other trading terminals