Happy 42nd Birthday to the Microsoft name...

[jebem]

(11-30-2017 03:25 PM)pier4r Wrote:  Jebem you worked at Wang Computers? I read that their desktop calculators were the first scientific ones back in the 1960 (then HP came).

On wikipedia the history of the company is quite sad after they were fixed with battling IBM for large mainframes.

yap, i spent more than 20 years of my professional life working for Wang Computers Europe.
We were a large community around the world, co-workers and customers.

I enjoyed the 2200 and the PCS computer series from the late 70's and early 80's (CRT monitor based, so no nixie tubes anymore). These machines had a solid state O.S. with an integrated BASIC interpreter having a lot of extended functions, like scientific ROM modules able to perform matrix operations with dedicated functions, specific peripherals support like printers, telecommunications devices, Philips type cassette storage, 8" floppies, and later support for hard disk storage (mainly Control Data Systems).

But i worked mostly with the Wang VS series that were very sophisticated for their time (early 80's), offering 4th generation relational databases, compiled programming languages with BASIC, COBOL74, FORTAN and even C, advanced distributed systems using telecommunications (X.25, IBM SNA), and the most advanced Office application at the time (not only word processing, but audio and video integration, something that was unique at the time; all this happened before the IBM-PC).

We had a few of those nixie tubes Wang scientific calculators lying around in the warehouse and nobody care about them.
Now I realize that i lost an opportunity of grab one or two for my collection.