Old Calculator Web Museum Advertising Archive
Wang Electronic Calculators - Wang 300-Series
Wang 300-Series Advertisement, May 1968.
This advertisement was created as the Wang 300-Series had reached its
peak, with the line of various options covering everything from Keyboard/Display
units with built-in Trigonometric programs, Multi-User calculators (up
to four simultaneous users), Programming
Keyboard/Display Units, Various I/O Options, Memory Storage Expansion Units, and
various other accessories which made the 300-Series, while rather aged
at this time, still capable of being a powerful personal calculating
environment.
However, major havoc was looming when this ad was placed, just before
Hewlett Packard announced it's mind-blowing 9100A
desktop programmable scientific calculator, which totally blew Wang's
previously market-leading 300-Series out of the water. Literally overnight,
sales of Wang's 300-Series plummeted, resulting
in a frenzy of activity within Wang Laboratories to play catch-up with its
Wang 700-Series calculator, which
didn't make it to market until almost a full two years after HP's machine,
and HP's even more-powerful successors.
This blow to Wang's market share marked the beginning of the end of Wang's
dominance in the high-end electronic calculator marketplace, and the genesis
of Wang's move into a much different (and highly profitable) technology,
that of Electronic Word Processing.
