Early Designs of Automated Trading
Like later Internet based e-commerce systems such as eBay, sellers uploaded inventory to a database, buyers browsed inventory online but in this pre-Internet era, they consummated transactions by telephone. Buyers then paid Sellers, Sellers shipped goods to Buyers and the Exchange billed the seller a commission. After several years of operations and some bad transactions, the Exchange invented an escrow services to protect buyers, sellers and the Exchange itself. The absence of a verifiable way to close credit card transactions on-line prevented an "all on-line" trade system.
In 1986, the Exchange created an electronic trading system that was showcased at the COMDEX Trade Show in Las Vegas which attracting wide attention to their vision of an all-electronic, all "on-line" system for buying and selling all types of equipment. The BCENE auction trading system pre-dated all other efforts to create on-line trade and was widely viewed as a major innovation in how commerce would be conducted in all business areas. Standard Oil Company brought BoCoEx under contract and secured all rights to the system seeking advice on how to create a world-scale on-line trading system. Standard Oil pursued this for several years until that oil company was sold to British Petroleum and the idea was shelved but not scrapped. Standard Oil tried to sell the idea and the BoCoEx contracts to other companies and eventually abandoned the effort and released Randall and Hall from their exclusive consulting contracts.
Read more about this topic: Boston Computer Exchange
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