Group 1 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) was created on May 26, 1896, by journalist Charles Dow to track industrial stock prices and gauge the health of the U.S. economy [1][3] - The original average started at 40.94 points, based on a weighted average of twelve stocks, and has since increased to 49,259 points [3] - The Dow expanded from 12 to 20 companies in 1916 and reached its current size of 30 component companies in 1928 [3] Group 2 - Initially, investing in the stock market was seen as speculative, and the Dow had little prominence outside Wall Street in its early years [4] - By the 1920s, public interest in stock investing grew, leading the industrial average to rise from around 100 in 1924 to nearly 400 before the 1929 crash [4] Group 3 - The American Cotton Oil Company, founded in 1889, was an early manufacturer of refined cottonseed oil and was dropped from the Dow in 1901, later merging into Gold Dust Corp. and ultimately becoming part of Unilever [6][7][8] - The American Sugar Refining Company, founded in 1891, dominated the sugar refining industry and was rebranded as Domino Sugar in 1900; it was dropped from the Dow in 1930 and is currently a private company known as ASR Group [9][10]