Why Did Michael Bloomberg Build the Bloomberg Terminal?

David Senra, reading Bloomberg by Bloomberg, says Michael Bloomberg built the terminal so people without specialized training could sit down, hit a key, and get an answer to a financial question, including questions they did not know they should ask. He was convinced the company was doing something nobody else could do, and that nobody else was even trying. The heart of the business, then and later, was putting more information at people's fingertips, more quickly and more accurately than they could get it anywhere else.

The build was paid for with his own money. Spending grew to $4 million of the $10 million he had, while he became responsible for the families of almost two dozen employees. If the venture failed, he would have failed them, their spouses, their children, and the customers who had been promised a machine.

The first delivery was June 1983. The six-month promise ran out on a Saturday, so they could slide to Monday, and Monday did not have to mean Monday morning. What they handed over was on time, close to it, something that worked, sort of, and a machine that would be useful, somewhat. Over time the terminal grew to a wider set of functions written by more than 5,000 programmers and engineers. It began as that simple premise.