The history of electronic trading platforms and their innovation went through several key stages; they did not appear suddenly because of a single person, but rather as the result of technological development contributed to by multiple pioneers.
## The Beginning and Origins (late 1960s)
The first idea for trading platforms began in **1969** with the emergence of a system called **Instinet** (Institutional Networks Corporation). This system enabled large institutions and investment funds to trade shares away from the traditional trading floor of the stock exchange.
But the real leap that changed the concept of trading for the public came in **1971**, with the establishment of the **NASDAQ** exchange as the first electronic financial market in the world. It completely moved away from the traditional idea of trading and made prices appear on computer screens.
## Who was the first to invent electronic trading platforms?
If we want to identify the "first innovator" who brought electronic trading into the form of interactive platforms and digital networks, there are two prominent names:
### 1. Jerome Pustilnik
He is the founder of the **Instinet** system in 1969. Bush is the spiritual father of electronic trading, as he thought of linking computers together to make it easier to trade stocks without the need for a traditional human broker shouting in the trading hall.
### 2. Peter Kévy (Peterffy Thomas)
A Hungarian-American businessman, often described as **"the father of modern digital trading."** In the 1980s (specifically around 1983), Kévy invented the first automated trading software, and created a very small laptop computer that he took with him onto the stock exchange floor to read data and determine prices faster than any human. This paved the way later for the emergence of online trading platforms and the introduction of "algorithmic trading."
## When was it made available to the public online? (the 1990s)
In the **modern scenario** we know today (anyone opens a laptop or phone and trades):
* This service began to spread widely in commercial use in **mid-1990s (1994 - 1995)**, with the first boom of the global internet network.
* Companies such as *E*TRADE* and *Charles Schwab* emerged as the first to enable individual investors to open accounts and trade stocks directly from their homes via an internet browser, without needing to use a dial-up connection to a broker.