A brief history of the Bloomberg terminal

I have the highest regard for these terse, but information-dense displays that enable humans to quickly grasp all information they need to do their jobs, and nothing more. This is also something avionics provide - a modern cockpit displays are a work of art in layering needed information for what is happening at the time, both the dense PFD and the much specific that communicate aircraft status.

The modern Terminal is based on a private fork of Chromium to give it the look and feel of a VT100 terminal, and integrate their private networking and security technologies. The BBT predates HTTP, and backwards compatibility is hugely important to the company- they have a museum where a second-generation Terminal from ~1985 shows the current news, because they are so dedicated to backwards compatibility that they still can support the 1985 hardware.

For completeness' sake, here's also a history of competitor REUTERS' terminal:

• https://www.thebaron.info/archives/technology/reuter-monitor...

• https://www.thebaron.info/archives/technology/reuters-techni...

Bloomberg's interface looks overwhelming at first, but a trader who knows where everything is can scan a lot of information very quickly. There's probably a useful distinction between an interface being diffucult to learn and an interface being inefficient to use once you have learned it.

Starting October 14, 2026, Bloomberg is requiring a physical Bloomberg Keyboard for login and access on all Bloomberg Open Terminal workstations.

The harder Bloomberg tries to control and restrict its users, the more users will just find alternatives or even build their own proprietary systems. It thinks it can be Apple in the financial data world, but I highly doubt it.

Maybe related, but is anyone familiar with a series of trading terminals from BT in the UK? I cut my teeth in circuitry repair working on these models like the 405 and 405i in the early 2000s. These days I can't find hide nor hair that these things ever existed! Any time there's an article that mentions the Bloomberg terminal I always have dig around for this mythical series of trading platforms, alas I now worry my memory is playing tricks on me.

I wish that article showed what the display looks like instead of just the keyboard. Others here have mentioned the lovely information density; I'll have to search elsewhere to see it

Related: A look back: The Bloomberg Keyboard

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17079033 (104 comments)

> joined by former Salomon colleagues Thomas Secunda, Duncan MacMillan, and Charles Zegar

This is just too funny to be true: one bloke named "a second" and the other one named "clock" in Polish language

Andrew Paprocki: Bloomberg: home-grown server-side scripting

this is a great video to watch if you're curious about how the bloomberg terminal ui was made. https://youtu.be/ODgs0eWAIKc

It may be of interest to some that Bloomberg has an ocaml based DSL built in for pricing exotic derivatives.

Does someone know any font that is similar to the closed-source Bloomberg terminal font? I really love that font.

I did an internship in finance in college. Worked at a Bloomberg terminal that earned more money than me

The article has an image of terminal keyboard used by a legendary trader... the key-caps are immaculate; the letters haven't faded at all. Amazing. I wonder if they were double-shot...

> I especially love that Gross taped his login and password directly on his keyboard, which makes the object more relatable. I may never know what it’s like to manage billions in assets from a Bloomberg Terminal, but I absolutely understand the trial of remembering my passwords.

Wow, what a great history artifact. It is hard to look at this and not wonder where did we go wrong. Everybody _should_ know better, and yet here we are. And now immortalized in the National Museum of American History for all posterity.

Any idea on what technologies/toolkits are used to build Bloomberg terminal?

Love how those dense screens make numbers checkable at a glance. Tiny shops still live that gap—bank lumps vs invoice lines—just without a dedicated terminal.

A keyboard that resembles the old-school bloomberg one would be so cool. Wonder if something like that already exist...

Have we made any progress on a cracked version?

https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/8aiz67/how_...

Zitron must get on this ASAP it will make his day

Thank you

Godel > Bloomberg

Otherwise known as "that thing beside Danny DeVitos' bed in the movie OtherPeoplesMoney... i want one of those!"

At $32,000 a year per person the Bloomberg Terminal is a deeply unfair advantage for the rich to get richer.

Not to sound like a YC fanboy here, but I love how pretty much every great business can be traced back to a start which somehow follows what YC talks about today.

I guess the first principles of what makes great Founders and great businesses from back in the gilded age to today have stayed the same.

shit I really loved this, was searching for the history of bloomberg these days. thanks for sharing

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