An Wang

Born February 20, 1920

Shanghai, China

Died March 24, 1990

Boston, Massachusetts

Pioneer of computer-related innovations

"Progress does not follow a straight line; the future is not a mere projection of trends in the present. Rather, it is revolutionary. It overturns the conventional wisdom of the present, which often conceals or ignores the clues to the future."

A visionary inventor and industrialist, Dr. An Wang was a pioneer of the computer age. From devising magnetic-memory cores in the 1940s that greatly increased the amount of data that could be stored in a computer and making the data easier and faster to retrieve, to introducing desktop word processors in the 1970s, Wang was a leading contributor in the evolution of computers from room-sized to desktop systems. He founded Wang Laboratories in Boston, Massachusetts, which became the largest minority-owned business in the United States and made him a billionaire. He was estimated to be the fifth richest man in America by Forbes magazine in 1984. Wang gave generously from this wealth to improve hospitals and neighborhoods, university programs and art centers. During the 1980s, Massachusetts governor (and 1988 presidential candidate) Michael Dukakis (1933–) said of Wang, "I don't know how many countless thousands and thousands of people owe a debt of gratitude for what he did."

Excelling amid turmoil

An Wang (his name can be translated as "Peaceful King") was born on February 20, 1920, in Shanghai, China. He was the oldest boy and second oldest child among the five children of Yin Lu and Zen Wan Chien. His father, an English teacher at a private elementary school 30 miles outside of Shanghai, was a strict disciplinarian and emphasized education. Wang attended the school where his father taught and proved an excellent student. He entered the equivalent of third grade when he was only six years old and was particularly strong in mathematics. At age seven, he began studying the English language. He scored highest in his class on a competitive exam to enter Shanghai Provincial High School, one of the best in China. He was thirteen years old when he entered high school, and sixteen when he entered the Chiao Tung University, a highly respected engineering school.

Meanwhile, China was in the midst of turmoil—in an era sometimes called the "Age of Confusion." Japan had invaded and occupied the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931. There was civil strife among warlords, or regional leaders who ruled by force, within China. By 1939, when Wang was nineteen, World War II (1939–45) was underway and Japan was expanding its power in Asia. Wang was safe at the university, which was located inside a French-held district of Shanghai. He studied electrical engineering and communications. Wang graduated in 1940 and then worked as a teaching assistant.

In 1941, Wang volunteered with eight of his classmates for a secret mission. They went into a Japanese-occupied region to design and build transmitters and radios for Nationalist (Chinese) troops. He also worked at the Central Radio Works in Kweillin. The area was regularly shelled by Japanese artillery during the time Wang was there. In early 1945, he took advantage of a government-sponsored program that sent engineers to study in the United States, which had been a Chinese ally in World War II.

Wang and Ancestry

Until the time he was twenty-one, An Wang lived in either Shanghai or Kun San, where his father's ancestors had lived for six hundred years. Traditionally, some Chinese families keep a written family history that is updated every few generations. The Wang family had such a book that claimed to cover twenty-three generations, back to the time when Marco Polo journeyed from Europe to China. Writing about these books in Lessons (1986), his autobiography, Wang noted that such histories "gave our families a sense of continuity and permanence that I don't see in the more mobile West."

Wang was able to enroll in September 1945 at Harvard University, just as World War II was officially ending. Wang excelled at Harvard, earning a master of science degree in 1946 and his doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in applied physics in 1948. That year, he met Lorraine Chiu at a function organized for Chinese students and faculty. Her parents had been born in Hawaii, but she grew up in Shanghai. She was in the United States studying English at Wellesley College. They were married on July 10, 1949, and had three children: Frederick, Courtney, and Juliette. The Wangs became naturalized American citizens in April 1955.

Invents major advance for computers

Wang was introduced by E. Leon Chaffee (1885–1975), who supervised his doctoral thesis at Harvard, to Howard Aiken (1900–1973), a pioneer of modern computing who ran the Harvard Computation Laboratory. Aiken and his team of scientists had created one of the first computers. Called the Mark I, the computer filled an entire room because it relied on a mechanical process for storing and retrieving data. Aiken offered Wang a position on a team that was designing a new generation of computers. In 1948, he gave Wang the critical assignment of inventing a way to make it possible to read and record information on magnetic tape, which increased the amount of data that could be stored and also make the data much easier and faster to retrieve. There was a problem, though: In the process of retrieving and reading information from magnetic tape, the information was being destroyed.

Within three weeks, and while walking across Harvard Yard, Wang had a flash of insight: The data could be automatically rewritten in magnetic cores immediately after it was called up for reading. As he noted in Lessons, his 1986 autobiography, "I realized in that moment that it did not matter whether or not I destroyed the information while reading it. With the information I gained from reading the magnetic memory, I could simply rewrite [save] the data immediately afterward." Wang's method soon became a standard in computers until magnetic-core memory was replaced in the late 1960s by silicon chips, which were smaller but could store more information and retrieve it more quickly.

Wang's magnetic cores were improved in 1949 by Jay W. Forrester (1918–) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Forrester organized the cores into a grid and devised ways to access information more quickly. Magnetic cores formed the basis of the early mainframe computers made by International Business Machines (IBM). These magnetic-core computers soon made IBM one of the world's largest companies. Although magnetic cores are no longer in use, they were a major improvement that led to further innovations. Computer technicians still refer to the transfer of computer memory as a "core dump."

Wang made a bold move by patenting his invention. In June 1951, he founded Wang Laboratories to develop, produce, and market applications using his memory cores and other inventions. He had about $600 in savings when he began his own business, but in his first year he earned more than he had made at Harvard the previous year. The company earned more money in each quarter for the next thirty years.

As Wang's company grew from a one-man operation to a large company, he fought a legal challenge by IBM to his patent for the memory core. The case dragged on for five years, and IBM was planning a further challenge when Wang sold his memory core patent to IBM for $400,000 in 1956. The money allowed him to expand his business and made him a wealthy man, but Wang always believed that IBM had used its tremendous resources to overpower him.

Wang's company grew steadily, selling memory cores, designing commercial uses for them, and taking on special projects with other companies. During the 1960s, the company became a pioneer in the manufacture of desktop electronic calculators. Scientists, engineers, and others in need of equipment to help them calculate traditionally used slide rules, or large mainframe computers. Wang's desktop calculator, introduced in 1965, was faster, more advanced, and more practical. It was expensive at $6,500, but much cheaper than a main-frame computer. A smaller, cheaper model sold for less than $2,000. By 1967, Wang Laboratories was posting sales of more than $1 million and employed about four hundred people.

Always a visionary, Wang changed focus in the late 1960s from calculators to word processing machines, or typewriters with electronic memories. It was a crucial decision because in 1971 the pocket calculator was manufactured by Bowmar Instruments, and calculators quickly became smaller and far less expensive than those Wang had developed just a few years earlier.

Wang Laboratories began producing its first word processor, the Wang 1200, in 1972. It stored data on a tape cassette, but had no means for displaying text. A major breakthrough occurred in 1976 when Wang demonstrated the first cathode ray tube (CRT)–based word processor, which allowed the typist to proofread and correct a document before printing a final copy. These early word processors greatly improved productivity in business offices. New versions were rapidly introduced that displayed the entire text of a document on a large screen and provided users with a series of menus to edit and correct their documents. The user-friendliness of Wang equipment, which took into account that new technology can be intimidating, became a hallmark of the company.

The word processor, forerunner to today's desktop and laptop computers, was a sensation, and Wang Laboratories was the major producer and distributor. Beginning in 1973, the company's earnings improved by 40 percent each year until 1983.

Lasting contributions

In 1983, Wang's holdings were estimated to be $2.3 billion, and Wang had became one of the largest and most visible philanthropists, or donors of money for a good cause, in the Boston area. He contributed to Massachusetts General Hospital, built a factory at the cost of $15 million in Boston's Chinatown district that created three hundred jobs, and donated $4 million to restore Boston's performing arts theater, which was renamed the Wang Center for the Performing Arts. He gave $6 million to create the Wang Institute of Graduate Studies for software engineers and China scholars, and contributed $4 million to Harvard University and $1 million to Wellesley College, among many other acts of philanthropy.

Beginning in 1983, however, when Wang was sixty-three years old, his company took a downturn. The marketplace was changing rapidly, as desktop computers were quickly making word processors obsolete, and just as quickly, computers became more advanced and common in work and home environments. His attempts to keep company control within the family led key executives to quit at a time of rapid change in the computer industry. The company was ill-prepared to adapt its business systems to communicate with other operating systems and was attempting to catch up with new competitors at a time when those competitors were regularly introducing new advances.

After having enjoyed a long run of success, Wang was spending the last months of his life in 1989 and 1990 trying to avoid bankruptcy. Wang died of cancer of the esophagus on March 24, 1990, and was buried in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Two years later, Wang Laboratories went bankrupt, emerged as a smaller company in 1993, and in 1997 was acquired by Eastman Kodak.

Wang's legacy remains—from contributing major advances in the evolution of the computer to an early and lasting emphasis on user-friendly approaches to technology that set the standard for all computer manufacturers. In 1986, he received the Congressional Medal of Freedom for his many accomplishments. He was the recipient of over a dozen honorary doctorates, and, among other honors, was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

—Roger Matuz

For More Information

Books

Greene, Carol, and Jim Hargrove. Dr. An Wang: Computer Pioneer. New York: Children's Press, 1993.

Kenney, Charles. Riding the Runaway Horse: The Rise and Decline of Wang Laboratories. Boston: Little Brown & Company, 1992.

Marvis, Barbara J. Contemporary American Success Stories: Famous People of Asian Ancestry. Hockessin, DE: Mitchell Lane Publishers, 1995.

Wang, An, with Eugene Linden. Lessons: An Autobiography. Boston: Pearson Addison Wesley, 1986.

Periodicals

Hevesi, Dennis. "An Wang, 70, Is Dead of Cancer; Inventor and Maker of Computers." New York Times (March 25, 1990): p. 38.

Louis, Arthur M. "Doctor Wang's Toughest Case." Fortune (February 3, 1986): pp. 106–9.

Web Sites

Redin, James. "The Doctor and His Calculators." X-Number: World of Calculators.http://www.dotpoint.com/xnumber/anwang.htm (accessed on March 26, 2004).