Corporate finance pre-theory divided capital into stocks and bonds.

Evidence

Dewing began by presenting corporations as institutional and legal entities. He then discussed the ways in which corporations raise money by issuing securities, and described the different varieties of such securities. One main category was (and, of course, still is) stocks: those who buy a corporation’s stock gain rights of ownership in it, and if circumstances are favorable they receive periodic dividend payments. The other main category was and is bonds, a tradable form of debt. (A corporation’s bonds normally commit it to pay a set capital sum at a given date, and until then to pay set amounts in interest.) Dewing discussed the overall valuations of public utilities and of corporations, the basic techniques of accountancy, the causes and forms of business expansion, and the necessity sometimes to “remold the capital structure of the corporation” (Dewing 1953, p. 1175). — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 159