The company went through transitions between different product lines,[3] beginning with typesetters, calculators, and word processors, then adding computers, copiers, and laser printers.

[1] The company's first major project was the Linasec[9] in 1964, an electronic special-purpose computer designed to justify paper tape for use on automated Linotype machines.

Wang calculators were at first sold to scientists and engineers, but the company later became established in financial services industries, which had relied on complicated printed tables for mortgages and annuities.

[22] The design consisted of the logic of a Wang 500 calculator hooked up to an OEM-manufactured IBM Selectric typewriter for keying and printing, and dual cassette decks for storage.

The labor and cost savings of this device were immediate and remarkable: pages of text no longer had to be retyped to correct simple errors, and projects could be worked on, stored, and then retrieved for use later on.

[23] A 2002 Boston Globe article refers to Koplow as a "wisecracking rebel" who "was waiting for dismissal when, in 1975, he developed the product that made computers popularly accessible."

Each workstation looked like a typical terminal but contained its own Intel 8080 microprocessor (later versions used a Z80) and 64 KB of RAM (less than the original 1981 IBM PC).

Disk storage was centralized in a master unit and shared by the workstations, and the connection was via high-speed dual coaxial cable "928 Link".

[25] Ahead of IBM and Xerox, Wang captured the lead for "the 'intelligent' printer: a high-speed office copier that can be linked electronically" to PCs "and other automated equipment".

Unlike some other desktop computers such as the HP 9830, it had a CRT in a cabinet that also included an integrated computer-controlled compact cassette storage unit and keyboard.

The 2200 VP evolved into a desktop computer and larger MVP system to support up to 16 workstations and utilized commercial disk technologies that appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The "COCOM restrictions" theory, though, while popular in the West, is challenged by some Russian computer historians on the basis that development for the Iskra-226 started in 1978, two years before the Afghan war.

In his book, An Wang notes that, to sell the VS, "we aggressively recruited salesmen with strong backgrounds in data processing ... who had experience dealing with MIS executives, and who knew their way around Fortune 1000 companies."

The word processing software continued, in the form of a loadable-microcode environment that allowed VS workstations to take on the behavior of traditional Wang WP terminals to operate with the VS and use it as a document server.

At Exxon Corporation, for instance, thirteen 1985 top-of-the-line VS300s at the Houston headquarters were used in the 1980s and into the 1990s to receive mainframe reports and make them viewable online by executives.

Based on its good reputation with users and its program of aggressive discounts, Wang gained an increasing share of a shrinking market.

The first version of the hardware component was made of two large add-in boards called the WLOC (Wang Local Office Connection).

The keyboard had 16 function-keys and, unlike WordStar (the popular word processor of the day), control key combinations were not required to navigate the system.

Reads were satisfied in a similar way, by forcing an NMI, decoding the machine code indicated by the instruction pointer at the time of the fault, and then obtaining the desired info and updating the CPU registers accordingly before resuming the executing program.

[61]Wang Labs was one of a large number[quantify] of New England–based computer companies that faltered in the late 1980s and 1990s, marking the end of the Massachusetts Miracle.

The company underwent massive restructuring and layoffs and eliminated its bank debt in August 1990, but it still ended the year with a record net loss.

OPEN Pace, along with a new Windows-based word processor called UpWord (which was at the time considered a strong contender to retake Wang's original market leadership from Microsoft), were touted as their new direction.

However, after a marketing study[citation needed] suggested that it would require large capital investments in order to be viable competitors against Microsoft, both products were abandoned.

Ira Magaziner, who was brought in by Miller in 1990, proposed to take Wang out of the manufacture of computers altogether, and to go big into imaging software instead.

Wang Laboratories filed for bankruptcy protection on August 18, 1992, at a time when the company's attempted concession from proprietary to open systems was deemed by some analysts as "too little and too late.

[72] The renovated complex, which is now known as Cross Point, was sold in 1998 to a joint venture of Yale Properties and Blackstone Real Estate Advisors for a price reported to be over $100 million.

[73] The company emerged from bankruptcy with $200 million in hand and embarked on a course of acquisition and self-reinvention, eschewing its former role as an innovative designer and manufacturer of computers and related systems.

In 2005, Getronics announced[76] New VS (VSGX), a product designed to run the VS operating system and all VS software on Intel 80x86 and IBM POWER machines under Linux or Unix, using a hardware abstraction layer.

In July 2008, Getronics North America (now an arm of KPN) announced the ending of support for the legacy VS line as existing contracts expired,[77] and that TransVirtual Systems would be exclusive reseller of the New VS platform.

[78] The Wang VS product line, not actively marketed since the 1993 bankruptcy and a tiny portion of the Getronics business, survived in use into the 21st century; by 2006, about 1,000 to 2,000 systems remained in service worldwide.