ticker-tape parades – When New York City throws ticker tape at a parade, it’s carrying more than a party habit. The confetti traces back to 19th-century stock tickers—telegraph-powered machines that helped people see prices far sooner than before, and that later became part of the
On Thursday. Knicks fans are heading for lower Manhattan with a kind of excitement that feels distinctly New York: the team’s first NBA championship in more than a half-century. followed by the city’s most recognizable flourish—ticker-tape. The tradition is so familiar that many people don’t stop to ask what ticker tape actually is. or why it became part of parades at all.
Ticker-tape parades began in 1886, when New York City celebrated the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. As the parade moved along Broadway. Manhattan workers threw bits of paper—ticker tape—like wedding confetti from office building windows. The parade route has since become known as the “Canyon of Heroes,” and the practice has stuck through generations.
Joseph Janes. an associate professor at the University of Washington Information School and host of the podcast Documents That Changed the World. remembers how strange the material can feel to people who didn’t grow up with it. “When the Knicks won. and I heard that they were going to have a ticker-tape parade. I thought. ‘Oh. my god. ticker tape—good grief. nobody even knows what that is anymore. ’” he jokes.
The name comes from the technology itself. Ticker tape was produced by a stock ticker. or stock printer. a telegraph-style machine first invented in 1867 by the American Telegraph Company’s Edward A. Calahan. Calahan created a design that was later improved upon by Thomas Edison. These stock printers sent information about stock prices over telegraph wires and printed it out on a ribbon of paper—ticker tape. Janes says the term “ticker” stuck because of the tick tick tick sound the device made while printing.
Before tickers, people who wanted up-to-the-minute market information had to be near a stock exchange—or inside one. Kristin Aguilera. deputy director of the Museum of American Finance in Boston. describes the scramble for timing in plain terms: “Prior to tickers. you needed to be either close to a stock exchange or in the stock exchange to get any idea of what current market prices were. ” she says. If someone wasn’t in those areas. “you would have to wait until they printed the stock prices at the end of each day and then wait to receive it by mail. messenger. carrier pigeon [or] flag signals. ” Aguilera adds.
The stock ticker, which worked using preexisting telegraph lines, was a “huge innovation,” Aguilera says. For the first time, people could transmit stock prices in “very close to real time,” she says. By the turn of the century, tickers had spread widely—to brokerages, wealthy investors’ homes, news offices, and more. “Anybody who needed access to up-to-date financial information would have a ticker.”.
But there was a catch: tickers could only print so fast. When trade volumes surged, the machines fell behind. That wasn’t as dangerous when the market was rising. During the market crash of 1929, Janes says the lag worsened fear. “People freaked and sold and sold and sold, and that just drove the market down further,” he says. As the market was crashing, stock tickers were delayed—at some points by as much as hours. One of the scenes Janes recounts from his episode of Documents That Changed the World captures what it looked like when the city tried to make sense of the damage: tourist buses made trips to see a ravaged Wall Street littered with ticker paper. “Tourists were picking up pieces of stock orders and ticker tape because they’re just lying in the street. ” Janes says.
Over time, inventors pushed for faster models. One iteration was even described in a 1930 Scientific American article. Eventually. stock tickers were used until the 1960s. and excess tape was repurposed for parades—helping give New York City its enduring ticker-tape tradition. Today, shredded paper is used in place of ticker tape.
The Downtown Alliance says that since the 19th century, the city has held hundreds of ticker-tape parades. The most recent came in 2025. honoring Gotham Football Club’s victory in the National Women’s Soccer League finals that year. This year’s Knicks celebration will be the team’s first. When the Knicks won NBA championships in 1970 and 1973. New York City didn’t hold a ticker-tape parade for one reason or another. (The mayor typically determines when to host one.).
Even if the public no longer relies on stock tickers, the vocabulary—and the visual signature—survives. Janes points out that the stock-trading banner running at the bottom of television news broadcasts is still called the “ticker,” and stock movements are described as “ticks.”
For Aguilera. the parade’s materials are also a reminder that today’s tools didn’t appear out of thin air. “Technologies used today. from the TV news ‘ticker’ to Bitcoin. are ‘a factor of where we’ve come from. the people who have come before us’ and the inventions of the past. ” she says. “Whenever you’re talking about a technology, nothing is born out of thin air. All of these inventions built on the ones that came before them.”.
And that’s the quiet science thread running under Thursday’s celebration: a celebration built from a machine designed to move information faster—and, in moments of panic, faster than people could handle.
ticker tape parades Knicks Broadway Canyon of Heroes Statue of Liberty 1886 stock ticker telegraph Edward A. Calahan Thomas Edison 1929 market crash Scientific American 1930 Downtown Alliance