An Wang

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

An Wang was a Chinese-American computer engineer and inventor, born in Shanghai and raised in Kunshan County in Suzhou Prefecture. He earned a degree in electrical engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University before immigrating to the United States in 1945 to attend Harvard University, where he received a PhD in applied physics. After graduation, he worked at Harvard alongside Howard Aiken on the Mark IV, Aiken’s first fully electronic computer. With fellow Chinese schoolmate Way-Dong Woo, Wang coinvented the pulse transfer controlling device, which implemented write-after-read technology and made magnetic-core memory feasible. This invention was later sold to IBM. In 1951, Wang founded Wang Laboratories as a sole proprietorship, initially raising capital by selling a third of the company to Warner & Swasey Company. The company grew slowly, first producing desktop electronic calculators with digital displays and later a centralized calculator with remote terminals. By 1974, Wang Laboratories began manufacturing word processors, initially copying the single-user, cassette-based Xerox Redactron. In 1976, they introduced a multi-user, display-based word processor using the Zilog Z80 processor, which became the market leader. The company also diversified into minicomputers, releasing the Wang 2200, one of the first desktop computers with a large CRT display and a hardwired BASIC interpreter, and the Wang VS system, a multiuser minicomputer with an instruction set similar to IBM’s System/370 but not binary-compatible. Wang Laboratories was headquartered in Tewksbury and later Lowell, Massachusetts, and at its peak employed over 30,000 people. Wang insisted on handing control of the company to his son Fred in 1986, but was forced to remove him in 1989 due to financial difficulties. Wang also founded the Wang Institute of Graduate Studies in Tyngsborough, Massachusetts, offering a software engineering program, and donated substantially to restore Boston’s Metropolitan Theatre, renamed the Wang Theatre. He received the Medal of Liberty in 1986 and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1988. Wang died of cancer in 1990, survived by his wife Lorraine and three children.

Reader's Guide

Wang Sicong's career is marked by high-profile ventures and public scrutiny. In 2011, he founded Invictus Gaming (iG), which won The International 2012 Dota 2 championship the next year, as well as the 2018 League of Legends World Championship. He also founded the music management company Banana Culture in 2015, which managed Chinese promotions for Korean pop groups T-ara and EXID as of 2017; in 2021, the company was acquired by VSPN, and Wang was given the function of 'vice chairman of the company’s strategy committee'. In 2015, he launched Panda TV, an e-sports streaming channel designed to compete with Amazon's Twitch. In March 2019, CEO Zhang Juyuan announced that Panda TV would cease operations due to cash flow problems, with broadband server expenses and celebrity streamer salaries cited as too high. Wang had a 40% share in the company. Following the bankruptcy, a Beijing court imposed spending limits on him as he paid back investors. According to reporting by the 21st Century Business Herald, after the failure of Panda TV, his father refused to provide financial support to cover his losses, but his mother supported Wang with another 100 million RMB. On 27 November 2023, Wang and the Tai'an Municipal Government signed a cultural tourism project with a total investment of approximately 3.7 billion yuan.

Did You Know?

• Wang Sicong was born in Dalian, Liaoning, China, in 1988, and attended Swiss Cottage Primary School in Singapore and Winchester College in the United Kingdom.
• He enrolled at University College London (UCL) Department of Philosophy, but there is no evidence showing that he successfully obtained his BA degree from UCL.
• Wang served as a director of the Dalian Wanda Group twice: from 7 August 2009 to 8 March 2011, and from 26 January 2016 to 29 August 2022.
• He reportedly spent US$516.7 million on the construction of the Wanda Reign seven-star hotel in Shanghai, which opened in June 2016 and was designed by British architect Norman Foster.
• In April 2022, days after questioning the use of traditional Chinese medicine to treat COVID-19, Wang was banned from Weibo, where he had more than 40.5 million followers.