Wang Laboratories
Wang Laboratories, Inc., was an American computer company founded in 1951 by An Wang and Ge Yao Chu and operating in the Boston area. Originally making typesetters, calculators, and word processors, it began adding computers, copiers, and laser printers. At its peak in the 1980s, Wang Laboratories had annual revenues of US$3 billion and employed over 33,000 people. It was one of the leading companies during the time of the Massachusetts Miracle.
The company was directed by An Wang, who was described as an "indispensable leader" and played a personal role in setting business and product strategy until his death in 1990. Over forty years, the company transitioned between different product lines, responding to competitive threats to its early products. The company was successively headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Tewksbury, Massachusetts, Lowell, Massachusetts, and finally Billerica, Massachusetts.
Wang Laboratories filed for bankruptcy protection in August 1992. After emerging from bankruptcy, the company changed its name to Wang Global. It was acquired by Getronics of the Netherlands in 1999, becoming Getronics North America, then was sold to KPN in 2007 and CompuCom in 2008.
Public stock listing
Wang went public on August 26, 1967, with the issuance of 240,000 shares at $12.50 per share on the American Stock Exchange. The stock closed the day above $40, valuing the company's equity at approximately $77 million, of which An Wang and his family owned about 63%.An Wang took steps to ensure that the Wang family would retain control of the company even after going public. He created a second class of stock, class B, with higher dividends but only one-tenth the voting power of class C. The public mostly bought class B shares; the Wang family retained most of the class C shares. The letters B and C were used to ensure that brokerages would fill any Wang stock orders with class B shares unless class C was specifically requested. Wang stock had been listed on the New York Stock Exchange, but this maneuver was not quite acceptable under NYSE's rules, and Wang was forced to delist with NYSE and relist on the more liberal American Stock Exchange. After Wang's 1992 bankruptcy, holders of class B and C common stock were treated the same.
Products
Typesetters
The company's first major project was the Linasec in 1964, an electronic special-purpose computer designed to justify paper tape for use on automated Linotype machines. It was developed under contract to phototypesetter manufacturer Compugraphic, which retained the manufacturing rights of the Linasec. The success of the machine led Compugraphic to decide to manufacture it themselves, causing Wang to lose out on a million dollars in revenue.Calculators
The Wang LOCI-2 desktop calculator was introduced in January 1965. Using factor combining, it was the first desktop calculator capable of computing logarithms, which was notable for a machine without any integrated circuits. The electronics included 1,275 discrete transistors. It performed multiplication by adding logarithms, and roundoff in the display conversion was noticeable: 2 × 2 yielded 3.999999999.From 1965 to about 1971, Wang was a well-regarded calculator company. The dollar price of Wang calculators was in the mid-four-figures. They used Nixie tube readouts, performed transcendental functions, had varying degrees of programmability, and used magnetic core memory. The 200 and 300 calculator models were available as time-shared simultaneous packages that had a central processing unit the size of a small suitcase connected by cables leading to four individual desktop display/keyboard units. Competition included HP, which introduced the HP 9100A in 1968, and old-line calculator companies such as Monroe and Marchant.
Wang calculators were at first sold to scientists and engineers, but the company later became established in financial services industries, which had relied on complicated printed tables for mortgages and annuities.
In 1971, Wang believed that calculators would become unprofitable low-margin commodities and decided to leave the calculator business within a few years.
Word processors
The Wang 1200
Wang's first attempt at a word processor was the Wang 1200, announced in late 1971 but not available until 1972. The design consisted of the logic of a Wang 500 calculator hooked up to an OEM-manufactured IBM Selectric typewriter for keying and printing, and dual cassette decks for storage. Harold Koplow, who had written the microcode for the Wang 700 and its derivative the Wang 500 rewrote the microcode to perform word processing functions instead of numerical calculations.The operator of a Wang 1200 typed text on a conventional IBM Selectric keyboard; when the Return key was pressed, the line of text was stored on a cassette tape. One cassette held roughly 20 pages of text and could be "played back" by printing the contents on continuous-form paper in the 1200 typewriter's "print" mode. The stored text could also be edited using keys on a simple, six-key array. Basic editing functions included Insert, Delete, Skip, and so on.
The Wang 1200 machine was the precursor of the Wang Office Information System.
Wang OIS
Following the Wang 1200, Harold Koplow and David Moros made another attempt at designing a word processor. They started by first writing the user's manual for the product. A 2002 Boston Globe article refers to Koplow as a "wisecracking rebel" who "was waiting for dismissal when, in 1975, he developed the product that made computers popularly accessible."In Koplow's words, "Dr. Wang kicked me out of marketing. I, along with Dave Moros, was relegated to Long Range Planning – 'LRPed'. This ... was tantamount to being fired: 'here is a temporary job until you find another one in some other company.'"
Although he and Moros perceived the assignment to design a word processing machine as busywork, they went ahead anyway. They wrote the manual and convinced An Wang to turn it into a real project. The word processing machinethe Wang 1200 WPSwas introduced in June 1976 and was an instant success, as was its successor, the 1977 Wang OIS.
The OIS was a multi-user system. Each workstation looked like a typical terminal but contained its own Intel 8080 microprocessor and 64 KB of RAM. Disk storage was centralized in a master unit and shared by the workstations, and the connection was via high-speed dual coaxial cable "928 Link".
Copiers/printers
Ahead of IBM and Xerox, Wang captured the lead for "the 'intelligent' printer: a high-speed office copier that can be linked electronically" to PCs "and other automated equipment". A year later, The New York Times described the IBM 6670 Information Distributor as "closer to the standard envisioned".Early computer models
Wang 3300
Wang's first computer, the Wang 3300, was an 8-bit integrated circuit general-purpose minicomputer designed to be the central processor for a multi-terminal time-sharing system. Byte-oriented, it also provided a number of double-byte operand memory commands. Core memory ranged from 4,096 to 65,536 bytes in 4,096-byte increments.Development began after hiring Rick Bensene in June 1968. The product was announced in February 1969 and shipped to its first customer on March 29, 1971.
Wang 2200
Wang developed and marketed several lines of small computer systems for both word processing and data processing. Instead of a clear, linear progression, the product lines overlapped and, in some cases, borrowed technology from each other.The most identifiable Wang minicomputer performing recognizable data processing was the Wang 2200, which appeared in May 1973. Unlike some other desktop computers such as the HP 9830, it had a CRT in a cabinet that also included an integrated computer-controlled compact cassette storage unit and keyboard. It was microcoded to run interpreted Wang BASIC. It was widely used in small- and medium-sized businesses worldwide; about 65,000 systems were shipped.
The original 2200 was a single-user system. The improved VP model increased performance more than tenfold and enhanced the language. The 2200 VP evolved into a desktop computer and larger MVP system to support up to 16 workstations and utilized commercial disk technologies that appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The disk subsystems could be attached to up to 15 computers giving a theoretical upper limit of 240 workstations in a single cluster.
Unlike the other product lines, such as the VS and OIS, Wang used value-added resellers to customize and market 2200 systems. One such creative solution deployed dozens of 2200 systems and was developed in conjunction with Hawaii- and Hong Kong–based firm Algorithms, Inc. It provided paging services for much of the Hong Kong market in the early 1980s.
Overshadowed by the Wang VS, the 2200 languished as a cost-effective but forgotten solution in the hands of the customers who had it. In the late 1980s, Wang revisited the 2200 series one last time, offering 2200 customers a new 2200 CS with bundled maintenance for less than customers were paying at the time just for maintenance of their aging 2200s. The 2200 CS had an Intel 386 processor, updated disk units, and other peripherals. Most 2200 customers upgraded to the 2200 CS, after which Wang did not develop or market any new 2200 products. In 1997, Wang reported having about two hundred 2200 systems still under maintenance around the world. Throughout, Wang had always offered maintenance services for the 2200.
The 2200 BASIC-2 language was ported to be compiled and run on non-Wang hardware and operating systems by at least two companies. Niakwa Inc created a product named NPL. Kerridge Computer, now a part of ADP, created a product named KCML. Both products support MS-DOS, Windows, and various Unix systems. The BASIC-2 language was enhanced and extended by both companies to meet modern needs. Compared to the 2200 Wang hardware, the compiled solutions improved speed, disk space, memory, and user limits by tens to hundreds of times; although there is no Wang support for the 2200, many software applications continue to function.
During the 1970s, about 2,000 Wang 2200T computers were shipped to the USSR. Due to the Afghan war in the 1980s, US and COCOM export restrictions ended the shipment of Wang computers. The Soviets were in great need of computers. In 1981, Russian engineers at Minpribor's Schetmash factory in Kursk reverse engineered the Wang 2200T and created a computer they named the Iskra 226. The "COCOM restrictions" theory, though, while popular in the West, is challenged by some Russian computer historians on the basis that development for the Iskra-226 started in 1978, two years before the Afghan war. It is also different from the Wang 2200 in its internals, being more inspired by it rather than a direct clone.
It used the same BASIC language with a few enhancements. Many research papers reference calculations done on the Iskra 226. The machine's designers were nominated for a 1985 State Prize. Later, a somewhat scaled-down Unix implementation was created for Iskra-226, which was used in the Soviet Union.