Topic: Hardware

Technology giants: How the mighty have fallen

Summary: The recent death of Digital Equipment Corporation founder Ken Olsen is a reminder that it's tough to get to the top of the tech world but it's even tougher to stay there.

By Andy Smith | February 10, 2011 -- 07:35 GMT (23:35 PST)

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Wang Laboratories always remained under the control of co-founder Dr An Wang and his family, from its inception in 1951 to the doctor's death in 1990.

The company moved from typesetting equipment to the desktop calculator business in 1965 with the LOC-2, arguably the first of such devices to handle computing logarithms, which it achieved without the use of an integrated circuit. At the start of the 1970s, though, calculators began to be commoditised, and Dr Wang moved on to what were, at the time, extremely innovative word processors. They allowed text to be edited without requiring the retyping of entire pages.

The word-processing business developed alongside minicomputers such as the Wang 2200 (pictured), which had the novel feature of a CRT monitor built into the same unit as the storage unit and keyboard. Released in 1973 and running Basic, it was in many ways an early example of the desktop computer.

Dr Wang believed his company would one day overtake his bête noire, IBM. His VS range of minicomputers went some way towards this goal in the 1980s, but, ironically, early Wang PCs suffered from their lack of compatibility with IBM's rival system. Later, IBM-compatible Wang PCs were more successful. Ultimately, though, Wang's increasingly outdated focus on word-processing and an embarrassing 'vapourware' announcement in 1983 — in which Wang promised products that had not been started or completed — led to escalating losses.

Dr Wang died in 1990, and the company turned towards industry-standard rather than proprietary software. In 1991 the company even began to resell IBM hardware. Wang Laboratories filed for bankruptcy protection the following year. It re-emerged in the mid-1990s as a network services firm rather than a computer company, and in 1999 it was bought by the Dutch firm Getronics.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Topic: Hardware

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14 comments

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RE: Technology giants: How the mighty have fallen

Digitals' problem wasn't so much letting technology pass by. It was the world's largest UNIX producer at one point. It was the first to produce a commercial 64-bit processor (remember Alpha?) and still OpenVMS clusters beat UNIX and Windows clustering... 25 years later. Two big mistakes.... no spotting the PC revolution, and no marketing!

siobhanellis@...
10 February, 2011 11:35

Reply Vote
What about CompuServe?

Before the Internet took off, CompuServe was the place to be for microcomputer enthusiasts. It was head and shoulders above AOL. I'm not sure what happened, but I guess it just got killed off by the Internet.

nfordtchrpub
10 February, 2011 13:35

Reply Vote
- RE: Technology giants: How the mighty have fallen
  
  @nfordtchrpub CompuServe is still around. But ever since AOL bought them, it went down hill.
  
  TigerRaptorFX
  11 February, 2011 18:54
  
  Reply Vote
RE: Technology giants: How the mighty have fallen

Surprised AOL and Compaq are not on the list. I'd only vaguely heard of Acorn...might have thought they were the people helping pimps buy houses if you'd asked.

JimboNobody
10 February, 2011 18:28

Reply Vote
RE: Technology giants: How the mighty have fallen

I must have missed Yahoo. It surely is a dead company walking. Maybe next year it will be on your list.

DisasterWarning
11 February, 2011 07:49

Reply Vote
RE: Technology giants: How the mighty have fallen

if the purpose of this blog is to point out companies that are no longer here, than I do not see a problem, otherwise there are a few more companies that should be on the list:

AOL
Yahoo
CopmpuServ
ask.com

I know for a fact that AOl and Yahoo are still here, though these are shells of what they once were, in no way on top. I haven't heard anything about Ask.com for a couple of years back when they were trying to be in direct competition with Google. Web of Trust lists ask.com as an untrusted site, but I don't know how realistic that is, considering WoT is opinion based, (and in IE9 lists igoogle as untrustworthy).

Most of these were mentioned above, but just wanted to re-list them together and try and get a handle on whether or not the blog lists dead companies or once greats

KBot
11 February, 2011 08:22

Reply Vote
RE: Technology giants: How the mighty have fallen

Memories! Wang, Ashton-Tate...
Kaypro
CPM
VisiCalc
WordStar

Agnostic_OS
11 February, 2011 08:53

Reply Vote
- RE: Technology giants: How the mighty have fallen
  
  @Agnostic_OS
  
  I still use WordStar for DOS or a work-alike Z.EXE that came with XTree on my tri-core AMD computer every day.
  
  Me_too
  13 February, 2011 20:17
  
  Reply Vote
Unisys

What gave you the idea that Unisys no longer sells hardware? My paycheck is still generated on a Unisys mainframe. Their Clearpath Libra series supports both the Burroughs MCP and the Sperry OS 2200.

skeptic2007
11 February, 2011 09:58

Reply Vote
RE: Technology giants: How the mighty have fallen

I was beginning to wonder when a Wang would pop up.

The Tandy name is still alive and well, in Australia where it is the name used for RadioShack stores.

alsobannedfromzdnet
11 February, 2011 14:29

Reply Vote
- RE: Technology giants: How the mighty have fallen
  
  @alsobannedfromzdnet
  But in reality, Tandy were taken-over by Dick Smith Electronics some years ago and Dick Smith is really the major name. However, in their early days, Tandy were very important to the development of home computing in Australia.
  
  Restricted_access
  11 February, 2011 17:47
  
  Reply Vote
  - To be more precise
    
    @ptorning, tandy was owned by Woolworths Limited, which also owns Dick Smith Electronics, but only rebranded the Tandy stores under Dick Smith Electronics a few years ago.
    
    Tim Cook
    14 February, 2011 17:32
    
    Reply Vote
RE: Technology giants: How the mighty have fallen

As a past employee of Digital, I found that many of my peers had moved on to Sun Microsystems, a more recent company missing from this article. Although many have found a place in Oracle, some of the key innovators from Sun have recently left, fueling the new and upcoming technology companies of tomorrow.

Case in point..., as Sun Microsystems combined its real estate holdings with Oracle, they left Menlo Park, CA, just recently acquired by Facebook. The same was true of many of Digital's campuses in the greater Boston area. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ontheblock/detail?entry_id=39801

jilokrje@...
12 February, 2011 08:50

Reply Vote
RE: Technology giants: How the mighty have fallen

Every tech company will eventually fall, in fact, all companies eventually do for one reason or another. Just like people and nations, companies have a life cycle. Today's hot company will be tomorrow's corpse. Tech has a shorter life cycle than any other sector. Personally, I can't wait until Apple folds.

M.M.Grimes
14 February, 2011 01:23

Reply Vote