Tech History Today

October 21, 1949: Dr. An Wang patents Magnetic Ferrite Core Memory

Dr. An Wang filed patent for magnetic core memory using ferrite on this day in 1949. It later came to be entitled as “pulse transfer controlling devices.”  This was the first move that ignited the rise of the Wang industries – a company that later arose as a dominant company over IBM until its fall in 1992.

Wang Laboratories was a computer company founded in 1951 by Dr. An Wang and Dr. G. Y. Chu. Dr. Wang felt a personal sense of rivalry with IBM, partly as a result of heavy-handed treatment by IBM in 1955/56 over the rights to his magnetic-core patents.

Their’s was one of the first computer companies to advertise on television and the first to run an ad during the Super Bowl in 1978. Their first ad literally cast Wang Laboratories as David and IBM as Goliath, several years before the famous 1984 Apple Computer ad.