The Guru of Gizmos

The premier peddler of the new machines showing up in business offices is neither IBM nor Xerox, but An Wang, 61, a Chinese-born inventor who founded Wang Laboratories in 1951. The Lowell, Mass., company produces state-of-the-art equipment for the office of the future. Wang Laboratories dominates the market for so-called integrated information systems. These are elaborate combination of computerized word and data processors, high-speed printers, telecommunications hook-ins and video display terminals used by secretaries and their bosses. And such office innovations are likely to continue. Says Wang: "The cost of parts keeps getting lower, and the applications are getting wider."

The son of a Shanghai English teacher, Wang came to the U.S. in 1945 to earn a Ph.D. in applied physics at Harvard. Three years later, at age 28, he invented the magnetic core, a tiny, doughnut-shaped data storage element that remained the key to computer memory technology for more than 20 years until it was replaced by sophisticated semiconductor equipment in the late 1960s. Wang started his company in a dingy room above an electrical fixtures store on Boston's Columbus Avenue. The firm engineered one-of-a-kind products to fill special customer needs. One result was the first digital scoreboard, built for the opening of New York's Shea Stadium in 1964.

In the same year the company's reputation began to grow when it introduced one of the first desktop electronic calculators. But eight years later Texas Instruments began selling hand-held machines made with silicon chips and stole the market. Wang then quickly shifted his company's efforts into large-scale office electronics. In 1972 the company entered the word processor market, and soon introduced the television-like screen that nearly all electronic word processing equipment now uses for displaying text. The company at present has 35% of the world market.

Nonstop innovation and a sales force that is among the best in the industry have kept Wang Laboratories expanding rapidly. The company has averaged a 75% annual growth in profits over the past five years, including an 82% increase in the fiscal year that ended June 30. In the quarter that ended Sept. 30, earnings were up 84% over the same period last year.

Further growth, though, will be more difficult. The office-of-the-future market has become so attractive that the computer giants are now aggressively going after it. IBM, for example, last summer introduced its low-priced Displaywriter that will compete with certain Wang products.

Wang, who has been an American citizen since 1955, is now about to start operation in the land of his birth. He is currently negotiating with the People's Republic of China on a joint venture to produce small computers in Nanjing. Having heard of Wang's spectacular record, Chinese bureaucrats are already planning on $4 million to $5 million worth of production in the project's first year, and a 60% annual growth rate thereafter.

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