The evolution of the computing industry was very interesting to me....................

Products[edit]

Typesetters[edit]

The company's first major project was the Linasec in 1964. It was an electronic special purpose computer, designed to justify papertape for use on automated Linotype machines. It was developed under contract to Compugraphic, who manufacturedphototypesetters. Compugraphic retained the rights to manufacture the Linasec without royalty. They exercised these rights, effectively forcing Wang out of the market.

Calculators[edit]

The Wang LOCI-2^[4] (an earlier LOCI-1 was not a real product) was introduced in 1965 and was probably the first desktop calculator capable of computing logarithms, quite an achievement for a machine without any integrated circuits.^[5] The electronics included 1275 discrete transistors. It actually performed multiplication by adding logarithms, and roundoff in the display conversion was noticeable: 2 times 2 yielded 3.999999999.

From 1965 to about 1971, Wang was a well-regarded calculator company. Wang calculators cost in the mid-four-figures,^[6] used Nixie tube readouts, performed transcendental functions, had varying degrees of programmability, and exploited magnetic core memory. One model^[7] 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 asMonroe and Marchant. One little documented "feature" of these calculators was that you could predictably lock-up the calculator display heads, getting the Nixie tube display to endlessly "roll" numbers, by entering the sequence 30311142.59 [Enter] 99 [Enter] 9 [Enter].^{[citation needed]}

Wang calculators were at first sold to scientists and engineers, but the company later won a solid niche in financial-services industries, which had previously relied on complicated printed tables for mortgages and annuities.

One perhaps apocryphal story tells of a banker who spot-checked a Wang calculator against a mortgage table and found a discrepancy. The calculator was right, the printed tables were wrong, and the company's reputation was made.

In the early seventies, Dr. Wang believed that calculators would become unprofitable low-margin commodities, and decided to exit the calculator business.

Word processors[edit]

The Wang 1200[edit]

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 number crunching.

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" (e.g., the text retrieved) 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 (character, line), and so on.

The labor and cost savings of this device were immediate, and remarkable: pages of text no longer had to be retyped to correct simple errors, and projects could be worked on, stored, and then retrieved for use later on. The rudimentary Wang 1200 machine was the precursor of the Wang Office Information System (OIS), which revolutionized the way typing projects were performed in the American workplace.

Wang OIS[edit]

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 were told to design a word processing machine, they were given no resources.^{[citation needed]} They perceived the assignment as busywork. They went ahead anyway, wrote the manual, and convinced Dr. Wang to turn it into a real project. The word processing machine — the Wang 1200 WPS — was introduced in June 1976 and was an instant success, as was its successor, the 1977 Wang OIS^[8] (Office Information System).

These products were technological breakthroughs. They were multi-user systems. Each workstation looked like a typical terminal, but contained its own Intel 8080 microprocessor (later versions used a Z80) and 64K of RAM (comparable, but lower, in power than the original IBM PC which came out in 1981). Disk storage was centralized in a master unit and shared by the workstations, and connection was via high-speed dual coaxial cable "928 Link".^[9] Multiple OIS masters could be networked to each other, allowing file sharing among hundreds of users. The systems were user-friendly and fairly easy to administer, with the latter task often performed by office personnel, in an era when most machines required trained administrators.

All software for the systems was developed by Wang Laboratories, and the operating system, file formats, and electronic interface specification were closely held proprietary secrets. Wang did not want third parties developing for or interconnecting with its systems. (This was relaxed somewhat in the late eighties).^{[citation needed]}