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AN WANG AND HIGH-TECH ELECTRONICS

The career of An Wang and the rise of high-technology electronics went hand in hand. A Chinese national, Wang completed his doctorate in applied physics at Harvard University in 1948 and remained there as a research assistant, where he was fortunate to work with Howard Aiken, a pioneer in the development of computers. Wang created, and then in 1949 patented, the pulse transfer controlling device, an invention that advanced computer core memory. In 1951, thinking the infant computer industry showed enormous potential, he left Harvard and set up his own firm, Wang Laboratories.

Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s Wang Laboratories became known as an aggressive firm on the cutting edge of electronics technology; it was Wang, for example, that installed the first electronic Scoreboard at Shea Stadium. The firm's first major product line was in the desktop-calculator business: in 1965 it introduced LOCI, an electronic desktop calculator. The following year Wang came out with a less expensive, more user-friendly model, and by decade's end it was the leader in this market.

Then, in a move that at first appeared puzzling, Wang suddenly stopped producing calculators in 1970 to pursue the computer business more aggressively. The strategy was successful: as Wang had correctly believed, the price of calculators tumbled, and many firms such as Bowmar Instruments went bankrupt. In 1971 Wang introduced a word processor, and the following year its small business computer was on the marketplace. By the mid 1970s Wang Laboratories had broken onto the Fortune 500 list of largest industrials and dominated the word processing market.