It seems to have been reading about Malkiel and Quandt's favorable economic analysis of options in an article in the magazine Institutional Investor (Malkiel and Quandt 1968) that drew the attention of a leading member of the Board of Trade: the grain trader Edmund O'Connor. Options were desirable but traded only ad hoc. Might the Board not profitably standardize them and trade them in a busy, efficient Chicago pit?

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 651