A little financial/stock (history) advice, please?

Willie-

Why don't you gather a handful of big name companies (Xerox, etc.) and check Wikipedia to see when they were founded? You can use the Forbes and Fortune 500 lists, or the Dow Jones list.

This should help a lot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Companies_established_in_1940
Now that doesn't tell you when the companies were first publicky traded, but you can click on the names such as McDonald's to read the article that may tell you that. Also, click on earlier and later years for other companies started around that time.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. closed over $100,000 2003. It has gone over $130,000/share since then (but is about halved by now I believe) I cannot imagine it was expensive to purchase at inception. I mean Warren Buffet purchased shares for $7-8 bucks in 60s.

It is not NEW in mid forties. But, it was less than 10 years old (1939). Maybe even under another name. Oliver Chase I think is dude who started with it. And, I am not sure if Buffet changed name to suit him. But, it would have made everyone who got it really wealthy by 2004 if they got and held it for those many years.

You could check telephone/communication stocks, insurance stocks and the like. I think I saw a ton about those areas starting (and some still thriving) in that time frame. Also, due to war - there were a lot of manufacturing things that started then and some still about. You could check those areas too.

I hope you hit on something!

Christine

How about Proctor & Gamble?

IBM

Coca Cola?

IBM and Coca Cola have both been around since the 1880's

Richard

Ten shares of IBM bought in 1950, stuffed in a shoe box, and then forgotten about until 2004 would be worth over ten million dollars in 2004.

Xerox in the 1940s? Xerox can trace its roots to 1906, but I don't think they were offering stocks until later. In 1958 the company Haloid its name to Haloid Xerox, reflecting its belief that the company's future lay with xerography, although photography products were still more profitable. That balance quickly changed with the success of the Xerox 914 copier. Introduced in 1960, it was the first automatic Xerox copier, and the first marketable plain-paper copier. The company could not afford a blanket advertising campaign, so it placed ads in magazines and on television programs where it hoped business owners would see them. The company also offered the machines for monthly lease to make xerography affordable for smaller businesses.

Demand for the 650-pound 914 model exceeded Haloid-Xerox's most optimistic projections, despite its large size. Fortune later called the copier "the most successful product ever marketed in America." Sales and rental of xerographic products doubled in 1961 and kept growing. In 1961 the company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange and changed its name to the Xerox

Back then, the big blue-chip companies were considered the best things to buy if you were in it for the long term.

How about AT&T which has been offering stocks in some form and under various names since the 1880s? Ford, GM, or other US car companies?

Coca-Cola might be a good choice, but I can't remember when it was first listed on the NYSE. I suspect it was before the 1940s.