Charles Henry Dow was born on November 6, 1851, in Sterling, Connecticut, the son of a farmer.

He grew up to become a journalist, working on the Springfield Republican, the Providence Star, the Providence Evening Press, and the Providence ,journal.

He moved to New York City in 1880 and became a reporter for a financial news service called the Kiernan News Agency.

Dow remembered a friend and fellow writer from his days at the Evening Press named Edward D. Jones. He brought Jones into the company.

By 1882, they had developed their own ideas about how to report financial news. They formed their own company in a basement on Wall Street, next to the stock exchange. The firm, known as Dow Jones and Company, delivered news by messenger to the financial wizards of Wall Street.

By 1889, the handwritten bulletins had evolved into The Wall Street ,journal, a four-page afternoon paper. On May 26, 1896, Dow and Jones launched the Dow Jones Industrial Average, then a daily composite of 12 "smokestack" companies that produced coal, leather, cotton, and sugar.

A year later, they came out with a ticker to provide instant stock market updates. The first publication of an average comparable to today's 30 industrial stocks was on October 1, 1928. The Dow closed that day at 240.01.