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Wang

thedelihaus

thedelihaus

Nocturnal transmissions
Wang.


An unfortunate company name.



Wang Laboratories (circa. est. 1951 via Dr. An Wang & Dr. G. Y. Chu & based in Mass- Cambridge, Tewksbury & Lowell).

In the 1980s, revenue of $3 billion a year and 40,000 people.

Issues resulting from incompatibility with IBM offerings, and bad business practices and family appointment issues were the Bane and downfall of the company, though it still exists today, albeit a wearer of a different coat.






Still, though, on review, an unfortunate, in an American market, choice of name.
 
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thedelihaus said:
Wang.


An unfortunate company name.



Wang Laboratories (circa. est. 1951 via Dr. An Wang & Dr. G. Y. Chu & based in Mass- Cambridge, Tewksbury & Lowell).

In the 1980s, revenue of $3 billion a year and 40,000 people.

Issues resulting from incompatibility with IBM offerings, and bad business practices and family appointment issues were the Bane and downfall of the company, though it still exists today, albeit a wearer of a different coat.






Still, though, on review, an unfortunate, in an American market, choice of name.
Click to expand...

I'm right smack dab in the middle of "Wang Country" (No snickering from you kids in the back!)!

The former Wang headquarters is now known as "Crosspoint Towers" and is leased out to various companies. Dr. Wang was a much liked figure around the Lowell area, not only did his company provide many jobs to the locals, he was active in charity work as well.

To this day, you still hear people refering to the Crosspoint Towers as the Wang building.
 
Name of the Game

I used to date a girl in Chelmsford and would drive right past the Wang on Rt. 3.

A Wang is bad, but a Digital worse.

How could you not succeed in the emerging internet era with a name such as Digital?

:no:
 
How could Digital fail?

Ken Olson

He just refused to believe that personal computers would be the wave of the future. [http://www.snopes.com/quotes/kenolsen.asp]

I worked on Digital VAX's in the mid-80's -- sweet machines and VMS was a nice OS.

Even the mightiest entrepreneur can't hold back market forces.

Steve A.
 
i worked for wang labs for 5 years 1979-84, Dr Wangs Son Freddie was put in charge of R&D and so much stuff came out of their before it was ready. it was the PC and the death of Dr Wang that did the company in ,not to mention none of the banks had any confidence in Freddie, but it was a great place to work for a awhile and their VS line of minicomputers was terrific their Word Processing is still virtually unmatched
 
The sale of the old Wang complex in Lowell just fell through. Heard it on the news earlier this week. I drive by every day on I-495 en route to Andover (or Bendover, as I like to call our campus).

Even the stately Wang Theater has been re-monikered (although they have kept "Wang" in the name).

Pretty much everyone my age in our town worked for DEC (and was let go by them) at some time in the past.

Despite the profound impact that DEC had on the computer industry, probably most folks outside of "Route 128" would find this thread arcane in the extreme :-)
 
1. Every time I heard the name Wang, I'd snicker.
2. Not only did I work in a DEC plant in 1981, but in my basement is a DEC Pentium I box that was my first "real" home PC... that still works. Bulletproof.
 
laffs i cut my teeth on the pdp 8's, ask anyone these days about a switch register Duuuuhhh.. 11/70's i think every major university in the world had these in every lab, some 11/34's 11.05's those were the days...
 
There have been a number of names that became unfortunate when crossing linguistic borders.

Marantz came out with the PMS (for "portable music system") line of audio geararound the late 70s/early 80s. It subsequently was changed to the CRS line, with identical models and numbers; they just changed the prefix. I'm guessing someone finally told the Japanese what "PMS" was starting to mean in America.

There is a brand of popsicle sticks sold in South Africa. They are thick, and the Boer word for "thick" is "dick", same as in German. The term they use for this kind of sweet is "sucker", so the products are sold as "Dick Suckers." I'm NOT making this up!

And of course there is the infamous story of the Chevy Nova ... "No Va" in Spanish means something akin to "doesn't go"!

Plenty of room for more of these. Chinese has names (and words) like Fat, Kok, Suk, Fuk etc... and they often have good/auspicious meanings (fat = prosper; suk = familiar; Fuk = good luck). There is a shop nearby that is owned by the King Kee company, and many others similarly funny exist. It's just as bad when they choose English names. I've seen shops in Taiwan like "Test Tube Girl" (a girl's fashion boutique) and in Hong Kong there is a company called "Nunsex Monkrock".

In German, "hell" means light (as opposed to dark) and the word "gift" means poison. Would you like me to give you, uh... gift?!
 
Reminds me of the scene from Austin Powers:

"THE ROCKET THAT LOOKS LIKE A GIANT..."

"WANG!! PAY ATTENTION!":D
 
Arkay said:
There have been a number of names that became unfortunate when crossing linguistic borders...Marantz came out with the PMS ...There is a brand of popsicle sticks sold in South Africa...the Chevy Nova ... "No Va" in Spanish means something akin to "doesn't go"!...
Click to expand...

Indeedy. My Sony switcher unit, now living with member ashnut, was called the ASS-1.

geaugafletcher said:
Watching the women's speedskating during the winter Olympics a few years ago, I noted a Chinese skater named "Wang Manli".
Click to expand...

Tons of names that you just can't figure out how it slipped by the parents.

I did indeed go to school with a Richard Head.:no:

And there was a PBR (Professional Bull riding) rodeo rider who went by the name B.J. Cramps.

I dated a girl with the last name of Ramsbottom. Luckily she didn't match the description.

There's plenty more...
 
Well.. I guess if you get screwed by a company with the name of wang, it wouldn't be wrong to say you got wang-a-fied... better than mouth-a-fieing them...
 
mhardy6647 said:
The sale of the old Wang complex in Lowell just fell through. Heard it on the news earlier this week. I drive by every day on I-495 en route to Andover (or Bendover, as I like to call our campus).

Even the stately Wang Theater has been re-monikered (although they have kept "Wang" in the name).

Pretty much everyone my age in our town worked for DEC (and was let go by them) at some time in the past.

Despite the profound impact that DEC had on the computer industry, probably most folks outside of "Route 128" would find this thread arcane in the extreme :-)
Click to expand...

I was extremely fortunate to begin my career at DEC. Can't believe they were able to f*ck that company up, the technology we were using 20 years ago there is still better than a lot of what we're saddled with today.

I also spent time at Wang. That place deserved to go out of business.

I'm amazed at how many of our top technical people here at Cisco (another great company) in Mass were from DEC.

bs
 
My first computer programming was done on a Wang Computer in 1974. It was wheeled-about on a large A/V cart and had an IBM Selectric teletype printer. Started with a papertape drive and then was fitted with a cassette tape drive. I think that it had a whopping 2K (maybe 16K) of RAM...made for some interesting machine language programming (VERY compact programming). It could also be programmed in BASIC.

Anyone ever remember the teletype version of the Star Trek game with long and short range sensors?
 
There was longtime NASCAR driver Dick Trickle...

A local antique mall had, for years and years, an old Japanese sewing machine with its brand name proudly written across the front: Fukesuke. I can't imagine too many women buying one.

Neat to hear from folks who worked for Wang, etc. I remember their tv ads in the 80s when they were a big deal.
 
My first intro to computers was with Wang,, I worked as a Finance Manager for a Chrysler agency and we used a Wang with a cassette programed to various bank retail installment contracts,,still had to feed the figures in manually but the Wang used to type the contract automatically,,a large savings in time seeing as prior to that all contracts were hand written or typed manually at that time
 
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