Wang An ( Chinese уп 王安 , Pinyin : Wáng Ān , English An Wang , transcription En Wang is found ; February 7, 1920 - March 24, 1990) is a computer engineer and inventor , founder of the computer company Wang Laboratories . Chinese American.
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Early life and early career
Wang An was born in the town of Yushan ( Kunshan County, Suzhou County), which is near Shanghai . His father taught English in elementary school, and his mother Zen Wan Wang (nee Jian) was a housewife. He spent his childhood in Kunshan. He studied first at Kunshan Elementary School, then at Kunshan High School, and in 1933 he was accepted to the Jiangsu Provincial High School in Shanghai. In 1936 he entered the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at Shanghai University of Transport and Communications , taking first place in the entrance exam. In 1940 he graduated from the university with a diploma in electrical engineering . He emigrated to the United States in June 1945 for admission to a graduate school at Harvard University , where he received a Ph.D. in physics in 1948. After that, he remained at Harvard with Howard Aiken on the Mark IV project, Aiken 's first fully electronic computer. Wang invented a device for impulse control together with school friend Vo Vaidun, who fell ill before receiving a patent . The new device performed a write-after-read operation, which made it possible to create memory on magnetic cores . In 1951, the university reduced financial support for computer development, which prompted Wang Anya to leave.
In June 1951, Wang founded the Wang Laboratories Individual Enterprise . The early years were unprofitable and Wang raised $ 50,000 of working capital by selling one-third of the company to the telescope maker Warner & Swasey Company . In 1955, after receiving a patent for memory on magnetic cores , Wang sold it to IBM for $ 500,000 and corporated Wang Laboratories with Chu Geyao, another classmate. The company grew slowly and in 1964 sales reached $ 1,000,000. Wang began producing various models of desktop electronic calculators with digital displays , including a central calculator with remote terminals connected to it. In 1970, the company's sales reached $ 27 million, and the staff was 1,400 employees. In 1976, the company began producing word processing computers based on the Wang 2200, one of the first desktop computers with a large CRT monitor .
In addition to the production of calculators and word processing computers, Wana expanded production into mini computers in the early 1970s. The Wang VS mini-computer supported the simultaneous operation of many users and was similar to the IBM System / 360 , in particular, it had a compatible command system . The headquarters of Wang Laboratories, which by 1989 already had more than 30,000 employees, was located in Tewkesbury , and then in Lowell . When Wang decided to move away from managing the company in 1986, he insisted on transferring control to his son, Fred Wang . The company began to suffer losses and Wang An was eventually forced to dismiss his son in 1989.
Late years
Wang An also founded the Wang Institute of Graduate Studies, located in Tingsboro, in 1979 , which offers graduates a curriculum in software design and development . He made substantial donations to this organization, including income from the sale of his autobiographical book, Lessons. Despite this, there were few people who wanted to study, and in 1987 Wang decided to stop financial support for the institute and transferred ownership to Boston University .
Wang also made an important contribution to the reconstruction of the Boston architectural monument, which was later named the Metropolitan Theater. In 1983, it was renamed The Wang Theater, and the Metropolitan Center became known as the Wang Center for the Performing Arts.
After his death from carcinoma in 1990, Wang An left an impressive technical and philanthropic legacy. In 1988, he was admitted to the National Inventors Hall of Fame .
He and his second wife Lorraine lived in Lincoln . Lorraine Van died on March 1, 2016. They have three children:
- Frederick Wang, eldest son
- Kourtney S. Wang, Youngest Son, Manages “Online Today” Regional Internet Provider in Dallas
- daughter Juliet Van, ambulance worker.
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 Encyclopædia Britannica
- ↑ 1 2 SNAC - 2010.
Links
Patents
- US Patent 2 708 722 Device for pulse control, application filed in October 1949, issued in May 1955.
- US Patent 3 402 285 Counting device (using logarithms for calculations), application - September 1964, issued - September 1968.
- US Patent 4 145 739 Distributed data processing system, application - June 20, 1977, issued - March 20, 1979.
- US Patent 4,294,550 Ideographic Typewriter. October 13, 1981.
- US Patent 4,297,042 Spiral printhead. October 27, 1981.
- US Patent 4,386,864 Selective paper insertion and feeding means for individual sheet printing apparatus. June 7, 1983
- US Patent 4,489,419 Data Communication System. December 1984
- US Patent 4 508 463 High-Density Dot Matrix Printer. April 2, 1985.
- US Patent 4,514,063 A positioning device for scanned documents. April 30, 1985.
- US Patent 4,587,633 Management communication terminal system. May 6, 1986
- US Patent 4,595,921 Method of polling to ascertain service needs. June 17, 1986
- US Patent 4,638,118 Writing pad. January 20, 1987
- US Patent 4,712,795 Gaming (tennis) racket. December 15, 1987
- US Patent 5,129,061 Composite document accessing and processing terminal with graphic and text data buffers. July 7, 1992
- US Patent 5,334,976 Keyboard with finger-actuable and stylus-actuable keys. August 2, 1994