Everybody Needs A Wang

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The now defunct Wang Laboratories Corporation was part of the so-called Massachusetts Miracle of the 1980s.  It, along with Apollo Computer, Data General, and Digital Equipment Corporation, help the Commonwealth's rebound from two generations of de-industrialization and unemployment, especially in the cities along the Merrimack River.  Wang was found by Dr. An Wang in Cambridge, Massachusetts during 1951.  The headquarters moved north to Tewksbury in the 1960s and finally to Lowell in the 1970s, where it remained until 1997.  

The products Wang made varied from decade to decade.  In the 1950s, they may typesetters.  In the 1960s, they made calculators.  In the 1970s, they were creating word processors and experimenting with "minicomputers," basically a mainframe.  By 1977, Wang had released the Wang VS, a minicomputer aimed at business users and data processors.  However, by the 1980s, personal computers, rather than word processors and minicomputers, were taking over the market.  Wang fell on hard times and declared bankruptcy in 1992.  After bankruptcy, the company, now named Wang Global, focused on what it called network services.  In 1999, Wang Global was sold to a Netherlands-based company.  The current owner of the VS line of minicomputers serviced the pre-bankruptcy Wang VSes until the end of 2014.