The London Stock Exchange website provides the following historical information:
"For over 300 years, the London Stock Exchange has produced detailed market information for companies and investors. Technological innovations have transformed this service from a twice-weekly paper publication for the London business community to a continuous flow of electronic information to all the financial markets across the globe.
Jan 1698
The tradition of comprehensive market communications began when John Castaing started to issue a detailed list of market prices called The Course of The Exchange and Other Things from his base at Jonathan’s Coffee House every Tuesday & Friday.
1830
The electric telegraph transmitted price information via tickertape so producing a massive increase in the flow of financial information. Company announcements were also pinned up on noticeboards in the Exchange for the first time.
1960
The “Enunciator” screen, displayed headlines electronically replaced the noticeboards on the Exchange floor. Key announcements from Bellwether and SE30 (now FTSE100) companies began to be projected onto a screen on the Exchange floor.
1972
The London Stock Exchange and Extel introduced the Market Price Display Service (“MPDS”) with 16 pages of market prices and 4 pages of company news summaries. The service's mainframe computer took up an entire floor of a City office building.
1986
“Big Bang”, the de-regulation of the securities industry. As trading moved from face-to-face dealings on the market floor to computer and telephone dealings, a new method of distributing information fairly and widely was required. The Exchange enabled market users to view full text announcements on the Company News Service (CNS) and summaries on the Edited Text News Service (ETNS).
1988
The Exchange split its news services into two distinct services. The edited service, Commercial Company News Service (CCNS) was ultimately sold. The full text service was re-named Regulatory News Service (RNS) and remains the London market’s official news outlet.
The new computer-to-computer submission method, Direct Input Provider (DIP) was introduced, enabling companies to deliver announcements to RNS electronically and, via RNS, to key vendor and market audiences.
2000
RNS Internet Services was launched putting RNS at the forefront of secure corporate communications over the web.
2008
RNS redeveloped its technology platform to deliver improvements to the submission, receipt and display of announcement content to the market including XHTML formatted data output.
2010
In January 2010, RNS introduced a superior conversion tool to make it even easier for companies to submit their announcements to the market in the format and style they require.
The Present
Today, RNS is the leading specialist provider of regulatory disclosure distribution services to UK listed and Aim companies, giving them the power to communicate with the international investor audience and fulfil their regulatory obligations – wherever they are – through just one partner."
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