#6 Wang Laboratories

Wang Laboratories was a well known calculator company that branched out into the electronic word processing in the early 1970’s.

Wang's first attempt at a word processor was the Wang 1200. The design consisted of the logic of a Wang 500 calculator hooked up to an OEM-manufactured IBM Selectric typewriter for keying and printing, and dual cassette decks for storage. Harold Koplow, who had written the microcode for the Wang 700 calculator, rewrote the microcode to perform word processing functions instead of number crunching.

The rudimentary Wang 1200 machine was the precursor of the Wang Office Information System (OIS), which revolutionized the way typing projects were performed in the American workplace.

The company fell behind when technology took a large leap ahead, but Wang’s systems opened the door for word processing software on general-purpose PCs.

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