Tech District · VIDEO ESSAY

Wang Labs: Lowell’s Immigrant Tech Giant That Ruled Word Processing and Missed the PC Revolution Era

Before Silicon Valley owned the future, a Lowell-based tech giant helped define the modern office. Wang Laboratories, founded by Chinese immigrant An Wang, became a powerhouse of word processing, office computers, and corporate automation—only to watch the personal computer revolution rewrite the rules almost overnight. This is the story of a company that once seemed unstoppable, dominated a generation of business technology, and then missed the shift that changed computing forever.