Microsoft, Intel added to Dow 30

Reflecting the huge impact of high technology on the overall economy, Intel and Microsoft were added to the prestigious list of 30 companies that make up the Dow 30 Industrial Average, the world’s most widely used stock market and economic gage.

Microsoft and Intel will replace oil producer Chevron and tire maker Goodyear, stocks symbolic of the economy of the first half of the century.

Two other familiar names, Sears Roebuck and chemical maker Union Carbide, were also being removed from the Dow, and replaced by home-improvements retailer Home Depot and the Baby Bell telephone company SBC Communications. Also historic, both Intel and Microsoft trade on the Nasdaq "over-the-counter" stock market. Since its founding in 1896, all Dow 30 companies have traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Intel and Microsoft join IBM and Hewlett-Packard, the latter added to the Dow just three years ago, giving the DOW four pure technology components. The Dow also gets a taste of the booming Internet economy. SBC Communications, is America’s largest local telephone company and the biggest provider of Internet access, reaching a third of all American homes. SBC is seen as the most suitable successor to the railroad companies that were the driving force in the American economy a century ago. Ironically railroads have re-emerged as a conduit for a different kind of freight, Tracks are providing a ready-made route for fiber-optic cables and the explosion of Internet commerce.