Wang Global
| Wang Global, Inc.
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|---|---|
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| legal form | Incorporated |
| founding | 1951 |
| resolution | 1999 |
| Reason for dissolution | Takeover by Getronics |
| Seat | Billerica , Massachusetts , United States |
| management | Joseph M. Tucci ( Chairman and CEO ) |
| Number of employees | 20,000 (1999) |
| sales | 3 billion US dollars (1998) |
| Branch | ICT |
The Wang Laboratories was a US company, which in 1951 by An Wang was founded. The company's headquarters were in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1954 to 1963), Tewksbury , Massachusetts (1963 to 1976), Lowell, Massachusetts (1976 to 1992) and Billerica , Massachusetts (1992 to 1999). At its peak in the 1980s, the company had annual revenues of $ 3 billion and employed over 30,000 people. Most recently, the company was in the ICT business.
history
The company was run from 1951 to 1990 by founder An Wang , who had a direct influence on the business and product strategy . Therefore, both successes and failures of the company must be attributed to him. In 1992 the company filed for bankruptcy. The quite imposing Wang Towers are located directly at the Lowell Connector, the junction from Route 3 towards Lowell, Massachusetts. These were the company's headquarters until bankruptcy. They were then auctioned off at a relatively low price of $ 500,000.
Wang made sure that his family would keep control of his company after the IPO . He issued preferred shares (Class B stocks) with higher dividends , but only with a tenth of the voting right. While the majority of the public received these preference shares, the Wang family retained the common shares. Wang shares were initially traded on the New York Stock Exchange ; However, since the procedure for dividing the shares into two classes did not meet the rules there, Wang had to switch to the American Stock Exchange .
The company's products changed several times under Wang's leadership. When he died in 1990, Richard Miller took over the management of the company, and in 1993 he was replaced by Joseph Tucci.
In 1992, Wang Laboratories filed for bankruptcy, restructured itself as a photography software provider during the bankruptcy process, and renamed itself Wang Global . Wang was able to leave the bankruptcy proceedings just two years later.
1997 sold Wang's photo division to Eastman Kodak , focused on the ICT -Business and took over 1998, the ICT division of Olivetti for 2.3 billion US dollars .
At the end of fiscal year 1998 revenue was 3 billion dollars achieved and a loss of 16.4 million US dollars. The company then cut 3,100 jobs.
In 1999, Wang Global was taken over by the Dutch company Getronics for the equivalent of 3.7 billion German marks and renamed Getronics North America . Thus, after 48 years, the Wang brand ended. In 2008 Getronics North America was sold to CompuCom .
Electronic typesetter
The first major project was an electronic hot type -Schriftsetzer named Linasec and was introduced 1964th It was created on behalf of Compugraphic , which retained the right to manufacture it without paying any profit share to Wang.
computer
The Wang LOCI-2 (there was also a LOCI-1 , but this wasn't a real product) was introduced in 1965. She was probably the first desktop computer , the logarithms could be calculated. This was quite an achievement given the fact that the computer could do without integrated circuits because it worked with 1275 individual transistors . In fact, multiplications were calculated by adding logarithms. This led to noticeable rounding errors - as a result of 2 × 2, for example, the machine calculated 3,999999999.
Wang was a respected computer company from 1965 to 1971. The Wang computers used Nixie tubes to display the numbers, could be programmed in various ways and used core memory technology . The price of a Wang calculator was in the mid four-digit range. Competitive companies were Hewlett-Packard , which introduced the HP-9100A model in 1968, and traditional computer companies such as Monroe and Marchant .
Wang calculators were first used by scientists and engineers. They were later used increasingly in the financial sector, since mortgages and bonds were previously calculated using complicated tables. A dubious story tells of a banker who compared the results of Wang's calculators with the tables and found the latter to be incorrect, thus securing Wang's reputation.
In the early 1970s, Wang left the computing business believing it would not be profitable.
Word processing calculator
The word processing computer Wang WPS (Wang Word Processor System) was introduced in 1976 and was an immediate success - as was the successor Wang OIS (Wang Office Information System) in 1977.
These computers were a technological breakthrough of their time. They were multi-user systems , each workstation had a Zilog Z80 - microprocessor and 64 KiB of RAM . The disk storage was managed centrally by a master station. The stations were networked with each other with high-speed coaxial cables . Several masters could be merged, which made it possible for several hundred users to work with the same files.
All software for the systems was written by Wang Laboratories. The specifications of the operating system , the file formats and the interface were company secrets. Wang didn't want any third party companies developing products to connect to his system. However, this practice was relaxed in the late 1980s.
Mini computer system
In the 1980s, Wang marketed mini computer systems from the VS (Virtual System) family, which were also a success as multi-user systems in the office area.
Web links
- The Wang 2200. Retrieved May 18, 2013 .
- Wang 2200 Wang 2200 computer system in operation