A monochrome glass-plate photograph of a newspaper composing room in 1896. Ranks of type cases run down both sides of a long room lit by gas mantles on wall brackets and one shaft of daylight from a high window. The compositors working at the cases are smeared into translucent ghosts by the long exposure, their arms doubled and their faces erased. In the middle distance a clown in heavy white greasepaint, a dark bowl-cut wig, a dark ball nose and a pale ruffled collar stands perfectly still with a composing stick held in both hands at his waist, chin lowered, reading what he has just set. He is the only sharp figure in the room. In the out-of-focus foreground the flat steel imposing stone carries a locked-up block of type.

Divided by twelve

DOW JONES 31.58 · −0.05 · −0.15% · the day the newspaper printed 40.94

There is no drama in this day and that is the point of it. The market had run for a century without a single figure to describe itself; a man in a newspaper office added up the closing prices of twelve industrial companies, divided by twelve, and printed the answer. It was arithmetic anyone could do and nobody had bothered to do daily. Afterwards the market had a number, and a number can be remembered, compared, quoted, feared. Every close in this archive is a descendant of that division.

The photograph Noodles at the Composing Stone

The day's protagonist

Arithmetic — no symbol.

Move: 40.94 — twelve prices, one division

The average was a sum divided by its count, and nothing more sophisticated than that: the closing prices of twelve industrial companies added together and divided by twelve. The twelve were American Cotton Oil, American Sugar Refining, American Tobacco, Chicago Gas, Distilling and Cattle Feeding, General Electric, Laclede Gas, National Lead, North American, Tennessee Coal and Iron, United States Leather preferred, and United States Rubber — a portrait of what an industrial economy was understood to be in 1896: things burned, refined, smoked, smelted and tanned. Charles Dow had been publishing an average since 1884, but that one mixed railroads with everything else; this was the first to hold industry alone, and it is the one that survived. Of the twelve, not one sits in the average today. General Electric lasted longest, and was removed in 2018.

The deeper account

The average is often said to have first appeared in the Customer's Afternoon Letter. That letter had carried Charles Dow's earlier, railroad-heavy average since 1884, but by 1896 it had become The Wall Street Journal, and it is the Journal that printed 40.94.

1896 was not a confident year to start counting. The country was three years into the depression that followed the Panic of 1893, the presidential campaign was being fought over whether a dollar meant gold or silver, and the average fell for ten more weeks after this one to 28.48 — a number no market has printed since.

The archive's own standing rule arrives on its first page: a number is meaningless without its basis. Two figures are correct for this afternoon, 40.94 and 31.58, and they disagree because they are measuring with different rulers. Neither is the error. Quoting one against the other would be.

The photograph is lit by gas because in May 1896 the room where a figure like this was set in type still was. The first number in this archive was legible by a flame.

The artifact

The galley proof — twelve prices, one rule, one division

The arithmetic is the whole invention. Twelve closing prices, added, divided by twelve — a sum a clerk could do in a minute and which nobody had thought worth doing every day. The twelve were chosen to stand for industry rather than for the railroads that Charles Dow's earlier average had leaned on, and they read now like an inventory of what an economy was assumed to be: oil, sugar, tobacco, gas, whiskey, electricity, lead, coal, leather, rubber. The individual prices on this slip are illustrative of the period rather than the record — but they are made to add up: the twelve sum to 491¼, and 491¼ divided by twelve is 40.9375, which rounds to the figure at the foot. That figure is not illustrative. It is 40.94, and it is the first one. Every close this archive keeps is downstream of that line.

Read the proof

Printed text is shown plain; the compositor's pencil is shown in script.

PROOF · FIRST PULL · READ AND RETURN — Tuesday, May 26, 1896

the twelve, by the share: american cotton oil · american sugar · american tobacco · chicago gas · distilling & cattle feeding · general electric · laclede gas · national lead · north american · tennessee coal & iron · u. s. leather pfd. · u. s. rubber
sum of the twelve, divided by 12
the industrial average: 40.94
COMPOSITOR'S HAND: set it standing. same measure daily.
NONE OF THESE TWELVE REMAINS IN IT.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was first published on Tuesday, May 26, 1896 at 40.94, computed from the closing prices of twelve industrial companies. General Electric was the last of the twelve to sit in the index and was removed in June 2018. The continuous daily series carried by MeasuringWorth does not contain 40.94 for this date: before October 7, 1896 it splices the older Dow Jones Average, adjusted, and returns 31.58. Both figures are correct on their own basis. Ten weeks later, on August 8, 1896, the average closed at 28.48 — the lowest it has ever been.

The ledger — what actually happened

Measure	Close	Change	Marginalia
As printed	40.94		the first published value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average — twelve industrials, summed and divided by twelve
As it survives	31.58	−0.05 · −0.15%	the continuous daily series does not contain 40.94 at all: before October 7, 1896 it carries the older Dow Jones Average, adjusted to merge with the rest — a different index on a different basis
The twelve	12		cotton oil, sugar, tobacco, gas, distilling, electric, gas, lead, north american, coal and iron, leather, rubber
Still in the average	none		General Electric was the last of the twelve to sit in the index, and was removed in June 2018
The floor, ten weeks out	28.48		August 8, 1896 — the lowest the Dow Jones Industrial Average has ever closed, and it has not been approached since

Sources

MeasuringWorth — Daily Closing Values of the Dow Jones Average (queried directly; carries the note that observations before October 7, 1896 are the single Dow Jones Average, adjusted) — https://www.measuringworth.com/datasets/DJA/
Library of Congress, This Month in Business History — the DJIA first published, May 26, 1896, and the twelve component companies — https://guides.loc.gov/this-month-in-business-history/may/djia-first-published
S&P Dow Jones Indices / Dow Jones Industrial Average history — the 40.94 opening value and the 1884 predecessor average
The all-time closing low of 28.48, August 8, 1896 — still the record; corroborated across the standard milestone tables