An Wang was one of the great pioneers of the early days of computing. Just as the invention of the transistor led to massive advances in circuit design and ultimately computer chips, Wang’s invention of magnetic core memory provided the parallel advance needed in memory technology.
Born in Shanghai, An went to university at Harvard in the US, studying for a PhD in electrical engineering. On completing his PhD he applied for a research job there and was set the task of designing a new, better form of memory to be used with computers. It was generally believed that the way forward was to use magnetism to store bits, but no one had worked out a way to do it. It was possible to store data by for example magnetising rings of metal. This could be done by running wires through the rings. Passing the current in one direction set a 1, and in the other a 0 based on the direction of the magnetic field created.
If all you needed was to write data it could be done. However, computers, needed to be able to repeatedly read memory too, accessing and using the data stored, possibly many times. And the trouble was, all the ways that had been thought up to use magnets were such that as soon as you tried to read the information stored in the memory, that data was destroyed in the process of reading it. You could only read stored data once and then it was gone!
An was stumped by the problem just like everyone else, then while walking and pondering the problem, he suddenly had a solution. Thinking laterally, he realised it did not matter if the data was destroyed at all. You had just read it so knew what it was when you destroyed it. You could therefore write it straight back again, immediately. No harm done!
Magnetic-core memory was born and dominated all computer memory for the next two decades, helping drive the computer revolution into the 1970s. An took out a patent for his idea. It was drafted to be very wide, covering any kind of magnetic memory. That meant even though others improved on his design, it meant he owned the idea of all magnetic based memory that followed as it all used his basic idea.
On leaving Harvard he set up his own computer company, Wang Laboratories. It was initially a struggle to make it a success. However, he sold the core-memory patent to IBM and used the money to give his company the boost that it needed to become a success. As a result he became a billionaire, the 5th richest person in the US at one point.
– Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London
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This page and talk are funded by EPSRC on research agreement EP/W033615/1.
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