[5][6][7] The exchange grew out of the loosely organized curb market of curbstone brokers on Broad Street in Manhattan.

Efforts to organize and standardize the market started early in the 20th century under Emanuel S. Mendels and Carl H.

[10] However, in 1908 the New York Curb Market Agency was established, which developed appropriate trading rules for curbstone brokers, organized by Mendels.

Explained the New York Times in 1910, the Big Board looked at the curb as "a trading place for 'cats and dogs.

[11] In 1920, journalist Edwin C. Hill wrote that the curb exchange on lower Broad Street was a "roaring, swirling whirlpool" that "tears control of a gold-mine from an unlucky operator, and pauses to auction a puppy-dog.

[24] Its reputation recently damaged by charges of mismanagement, in 1962, the American Stock Exchange named Edwin Etherington its president.

Writes CNN, he and executive vice president Paul Kolton were "tapped in 1962 to clean up and reinvigorate the scandal-plagued American Stock Exchange.

Peterffy created a major stir among traders by introducing handheld computers onto the trading floor in the early 1980s.

This product was short-lived after a lawsuit by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange was successful in stopping sales in the United States.

[34] Nathan Most and Steven Bloom, under the direction of Ivers Riley, designed and developed Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts (NYSE Arca: SPY), which were introduced in January 1993.

In May 1995, State Street Global Advisors introduced the S&P 400 MidCap SPDRs (NYSE Arca: MDY).

WEBS originally tracked 17 MSCI country indices managed by the funds' index provider, Morgan Stanley.

While SPDRs were organized as unit investment trusts, WEBS were set up as a mutual fund, the first of their kind.

As of 2003, AMEX was the only U.S. stock market to permit the transmission of buy and sell orders through hand signals.