You know - I thought about your first response on the way home form the office. I realized the Time period you were referring and to most degrees you are correct. Much of it was done "offline" there was little choice. In 92-93 I worked for a company called F N Wolf in their New Orleans office - cold calling families in Miss and La is what we do - selling crap. Which we had to make a market in at the time. Or use the quotron machine.
Times have changed. - all trades go now are through electronic matching automated quotation systems. The AQ in NASDAQ.