Wang 600 Electronic Calculator

This desktop programmable printing calculator has a variety of digit and function keys. Above these, on the right side, is a space that holds a cassette tape. Left of this is a small display screen. Above the screen is the printing mechanism with a paper tape 9 cm. (3 1/2") wide. A metal tag glued to the front left reads: WANG 600. A sticker on the back of the machine reads: WANG LABORATORIES INC (/) TEWKSBURY MASS U.S.A. Another mark there reads: MODEL 600 2TP (/) SERIAL NUMBER CC5187.

An electric cord extends from the back. The machine has a plastic cover. The dimensions given do not include cord and cover.

Chinese-born An Wang (1920–1990) came to the United States after World War II to do graduate work at Harvard University. Not wishing to return to a Communist regime, he stayed on to work at the Harvard Computation Laboratory, where he and Way Dong Woo invented magnetic core memory, an important improvement in computer memory for the time. Wang soon left Harvard to establish Wang Laboratories. In the mid-1960s, he invented a transistorized logarithmic electronic calculator that would sell in several forms. The Wang 600 is a modified and less expensive version of the earlier Wang 700. Wang soon turned his attention to the manufacture of minicomputers.

The Smithsonian’s Conservation Analytical Laboratory acquired this Wang 600 in about 1974. When it was replaced in 1983, it was transferred to the NMAH historical collections.

Compare 1983.0171.01, a Wang 700 series calculator, and 1980.0096.01, a Wang LOCI 2.

Reference:

Accession File.

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