HistoricalUnited States · Nasdaq Composite · 10 March 2000 to 9 October 2002

Dot-com: keep the computer

The computer still works.

That wasn't the question the share price was answering.

A website can be busy and broke at the same time. Investors who paid for years of expected growth still need the business to earn it, and a working website doesn't tell them whether it will.

The Nasdaq comparison uses closing index levels over more than two years. It measures a price decline, not debt paid off.

Nasdaq Composite, closing level: 5,048.62 points; 10 March 2000
Nasdaq Composite, closing level: 1,114.11 points; 9 October 2002
Decline between those two closes: 77.9%; between these two dated closes · our arithmetic; (5,048.62 − 1,114.11) ÷ 5,048.62 = 77.9%

What did 77.9% measure?

The index's closing level between these dates, not the amount of debt erased.

Nothing is drawn between the two points. The source supplies two daily closes, not a price history, so this card shows two dated observations and no curve.

HistoricalUnited States · the Paige Compositor · Late nineteenth century

The machine that gets one tiny line

Twain backed an elaborate typesetting machine. His publishing business was also in trouble.

This one has managed a word.

Twain invested in the Paige Compositor to automate typesetting. His publishing business also struggled. He later went on a lecture tour to help repay the family's debts.

After backing a machine to put words on paper, he earned money by saying them.

The machine was one part of the trouble. The tiny "oh." is our cartoon's output.

An unscaled historical anecdote, not a documented event and not an approved dollar balance; no figure is supplied for it. The machine was an attempt to automate typesetting. The printed word is our cartoon invention: the real device did not print it and was not an ordinary paper printer. Twain's publishing business also struggled and a later lecture tour was aimed at relieving family debts; no single cause is claimed for any of it.

Two daily closing levels of an index, measured in points. The closes are the dataset's; the percentage between them is ours, worked out on this card rather than quoted from anyone. Index points are not dollars owed, and no total dollar loss can be inferred from them. This was a decline over more than two and a half years, not a one-day crash. The series is a daily closing index, not a total-return series. Nothing here reclassifies any company's reported debt elsewhere on this site as a dot-com loss.

Sources

NASDAQ Composite Index, series NASDAQCOM — Nasdaq, Inc., distributed by FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Rows 2000-03-10 and 2002-10-09 of the dated observations at https://fred.stlouisfed.org/data/NASDAQCOM, values 5048.620 and 1114.110. A daily closing index, not a total-return series. Two cited observations only, with provider attribution preserved; this is not a redistribution of the dataset.
Olivia Langdon Clemens — Barbara Snedecor, Center for Mark Twain Studies. The Financial Investments and the Bankruptcy, Around-the-World Tour, and Susy's Death sections. Scholarly biographical context for the business failures and the later lecture tour aimed at relieving family debts. The full indexed text of those sections was retrieved; a direct page open failed in the research session.
Permanent exhibitions, Paige Compositor section — The Mark Twain House & Museum. The Paige Compositor section of the permanent-exhibition description, supporting the machine's intended function of automating typesetting. An official indexed excerpt was available; a direct full-page retrieval failed. The permitted claim is limited to that displayed description; no operating details beyond it are inferred.

These historical figures stay separate from the running debt comparison. Source review recorded: 2026-09-13.