Options are very old instruments, going back, perhaps, to the time of Thales the Milesian (c. 624 BC to c. 547 BC).
Thales, according to Aristotle, purchased call options on the entire autumn olive harvest (or the use of the olive presses) and made a fortune.
Joseph de la Vega (in “Confusión de Confusiones,” 1688, 104 years before the NYSE was founded under the buttonwood tree) also wrote about how options were dominating trading on the Amsterdam stock exchange.
Dubofsky reports that options existed in ancient Greece and Rome, and that options were used during the tulipmania in Holland from 1624-1636.
In the U.S., options were traded as early as the 1800’s and were available only as customized OTC products until the CBOE opened on April 26, 1973.