There were no decimal points to help, so which three figures of the price did the numbers represent? Three red digits would appear in the bug-eyed looking domes at the top. Finally, depress the key for the price you want, i.e., bid, last opening, etc., and then wait.
Electronic touch buttons were almost as far away as touch screens then.
Input the four-letter Comex code for the required commodity and maturity in the first four columns by depressing the stiff clunky mechanical keys. It was this urge to compete that drove the subsequent revolution in dealing room information technology that the introduction of the Stockmaster heralded. And naturally, once one dealing room had one, we all had to have one in order to maintain the edge and keep competitive. It provided an aid to keeping up with the market and a source of information from where transactions could be covered. The Stockmaster was used in bullion solely for following the silver price and was only of any use in the afternoon when Comex in New York, from which live data was available, was open. We had one to share with the whole room and it sat alongside the recently introduced departmental electronic calculator which was developed around the same time, replacing the mechanically sophisticated but cumbersome pinwheel calculator. This piece of advanced technology created a certain excitement when it first arrived in the Sharps Pixley dealing room. Then, around 1968, came the first piece of equipment for the information revolution in dealing rooms – the Reuters Ultronic Stockmaster. There was, out of necessity, much more contact and camaraderie between competing dealers then, as they needed each other. How, in those days, did a dealer keep up with the market to evaluate his position, or when called upon to make a price? By following ticker tape for news and talking to other dealers to check their prices. In the 1960s, there were no screens and no live price data. For many decades, dealers have been accustomed to being surrounded by a myriad of screens with limitless price data and information on which they can rely when dealing and making quotes.
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