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AN WAN G
1920-1990
BY LEO L. BERANEK
BORN IN A Sit CIb about thirty miles from Shanghai, China,
An Wang created and nurtured a small high-tech company into
a major worldwide supplier of office information systems. Early
in primary school, he discovered he was good in mathematics,
but he found subjects that required rote memorization, like
history and geography, difficult. English was compulsory at
school from the fourth grade onward, but his command of the
language was solidified by his father, who was an English teacher.
His mother taught him Confucianism, a practical philosophy,
which he always emphasized was important to success in busi-
ness, being characterized by the attributes of moderation, pa-
tience, balance, and simplicity combined with the golden rule.
At thirteen he entered Shanghai Provincial High School,
considered the best in China. His mathematics texts were those
used in freshman classes of American colleges, and his geogra-
phy and history books were written in English. At the age of
sixteen he entered the MIT of China, Chiao Tung University in
Shanghai. After graduation in 1940 he spent the next year as a
teaching assistant in electrical engineering. In the summer of
1941 he escaped through the Japanese invasion lines to central
China and was put in charge of a group designing radio equip-
ment to be used in the war. While there, he learned about a
program that sent highly trained Chinese engineers to the
United States to prepare them for the reconstruction of China.
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
He applied, was successful, and inJune 1945 arrived at Newport
News, Virginia, with a stipend of$100 per month for support. He
was sent to Georgetown University, where he stayed briefly.
Luck was with him. He applied for admission to the graduate
school at Harvard and was accepted in the Applied Physics
Department solely on the basis of his letter. With straight A
grades, he earned his M.S. in two semesters in 1946. He was
offered a Harvard part-time teaching fellowship at $1,000 ayear,
which permitted him to work for his doctorate. His thesis topic
was in applied mechanics, and he received the Ph.D. in the
spring of 1948.
Wang went to work in the new Harvard Computation Labora-
toryunder HowardAiken, designer of the Mark I IBM computer,
then called Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. Aiken
gave him the problem of finding a way to record and read
magnetically stored information without mechanical motion.
Out of this work came a basic invention that Harvard allowed
him to keep and patent a magnetic core memory, which led to
a practical delay line. Following a vital extension of the concept
by lay Forrester of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his
invention was the basis for the core memories in computers for
the next twenty years.
In 1949 he married Lorraine Chin, who had come to the
United States as a special student at Wellesley College. There are
three children, Fred, Courtney, and Juliette. In 1955 An and
Lorraine became American citizens.
With $600 in savings, he opened Wang Laboratories in Boston
in 1951. Wang's product was magnetic, toroidal-shaped, nickel-
iron cores, around which wires were wound. It was in this period
that he learned the principles of manufacturing, marketing, and
management. In 1956 he assigned his patent to IBM for $500,000.
In 1965 Wang Laboratories introduced LOCI, a desktop
calculator, the forerunner of today's pocket computers. That
year they sold twenty calculators and the following year six times
as many. Improvements followed; the calculator became pro-
grammable; and the companygrewfrom thirty-f~ve employees in
1964 to four hundredin 1967. In 1965 John KemenyofDartmouth
developed the computer language BASIC, which Wang recog-
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AN WANG
247
nizedwould spell the death of his desktop calculator. He decided
to develop a minicomputer, similar to DEC's later PDP-S, which,
after several false starts, led to the model 2200 computer, first
shipped in late 1972.
Next came more elaborate word processing systems. Under
Dr. Wang's general direction, an engineer Harold Kaplow and
his team developed the word processing system that made Wang
Laboratories the world's leader in sales of office equipment.
That new machine was cathode ray tube-based, so the user could
manipulate text by moving words as they appeared on the
screen. The system was driven by a series of menus, so at each
decision point a secretary could respond to a clear set of choices.
It was perhaps the first computer with which an ordinary person
could interact.
In addition, a decision was made to allow multiple access to a
central station, a concept already employed by IBM, but different
in that Wang's workstations were semi-intelligent. This permit-
ted the addition of a Wang workstation at about one-third the
cost of a competitive workstation. In October 1977 Wang Labo-
ratories introduced a general-purpose computer, the VS, which
combined word processing with general-purpose computing. Busi-
ness grew at a compound rate in excess of 40 percent annually,
and Wang Laboratories in 1985 reached a sales level of $2.4
billion.
Throughout that period, An Wang was a brilliant concep-
tualizer, both in guiding the products of his company and in
entering the financial markets at exactly the right times to
permit the company's extraordinary growth. As one director
said, "He has done so much right for so long that you become a
believer, a disciple." He was concerned about loss of control of
his company and devised a combination of two classes of stock
that assured him of permanent control. Wang said in his autobi-
ography (Addison-Wesley, 1986) that no outside shareholders
would manage the company as well. "There is the fact that the
company bears my name," he wrote. "I take its health and
performance personally.... I have more interest in seeing the
company prosper than any other shareholder."
In 1982 Wang was elected a member of the NationalAcademy
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
~ ~ · .
0t ~ nglneerlng.
Dr. Wang was generous with his time in community affairs. He
gave Boston's Metropolitan (performing arts) Center $4 mil-
lion, which, when matched, produced $10 million in restoration
support. It is now called the Wang Center. He endowed the Wang
outpatient care unit of the Massachusetts General Hospital and
contributed $1 million to support Chinese studies at Harvard.
Through the years he provided help to Chinese persons in many
ways through scholarships and support of cultural institutions.
Dr. Wang's death left a void not only in his company but also in
the hearts and well-being of the residents of Greater Boston.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
word processing
