The Great Hardware Extinction of the 1990s started with a tiny computer explosion. Niakwa was one of the companies that lit the fuse.
After the birth of commercial digital computing in the 1950s, customer-users depended on hardware manufacturers, academia, or themselves for software. There were few third-party software vendors because computers were so rare, and those vendors that did exist typically only had one customer. Programming languages were so primitive and computers so different by make and even model that any software of the day was intentionally designed around a narrow hardware configuration.

Those customers who could afford a computer were “locked in” to both their software and hardware providers. A Univac customer wouldn’t dream of moving to cheaper IBM hardware (or vice versa) because the costs of change were prohibitive. For the manufacturers, the ongoing revenue from the “permanent customer” was more important than the initial “sale,” and hardware was discounted heavily to lock in each new future income stream.

This strategy began to change with the introduction of 3rd-generation languages such as Fortran and COBOL that allowed generalized programs to be mostly written for all computers and then “adapted” to a particular model, a quicker and cheaper process. Software migration became possible, and manufacturers didn’t like it.
At first, they retaliated in a positive way by inventing technically superior and competitive—and proprietary—programming languages. If they couldn’t lock up the customer with hardware discounts, they would do it with programming languages. For instance, IBM introduced PL/I (PL-One), Bell Labs had C (for their Unix operating system), Burroughs had Elliot ALGOL—and Wang Labs had Wang BASIC.

The Wang language, in particular, filled an especially fruitful industry niche, almost single-handedly transforming the world’s most popular calculator company of the 1960s into a successful, but reluctant computer company in the 1970s—Wang’s CEO (Dr. An Wang) was afraid that “computers” would scare off his customers by making his products seem too complicated. He compensated by making his products economical and simple to use—and calling them “calculators.” The strategy worked. Wang’s 2200-series of computers, using his combined BASIC languages and operating systems, rocketed upward to become the 2nd most popular multi-user minicomputers in the world.

IBM and other “big iron” computer builders scoffed at the little Wang suitcase computers, not realizing that their size was a feature. Basic-2 required only a tenth of the expensive memory used by greedy IBM compilers to perform the same task. And because Wang’s easy-to-learn language was also the operating system, programmers and businesses found that 2200s, though used by dozens of people at a time, could be managed by a staff of one.

Thus, 2200s began showing up in small businesses, colleges, and high schools that never hoped to afford a computer because the Wangs were relatively affordable, environmentally hardy, and could “talk” to every conceivable type of peripheral. They were even reputed to be used in US submarines, a feat that IBM “big iron” could not hope to achieve.
But in the 1980s, mighty Wang Labs lost its way. Having enjoyed double-digit economic growth throughout the 2200 era, the charismatic and pioneering An Wang became ill. His successors took a bite

of the apple and became ashamed of the little suitcase-that-could. Wang’s new leaders lusted for the prestige of running a company like IBM that made impressive looking computers, and over the course of a few short years, it became obvious that Wang intended to abandon the 2200 to join the League of Bloated Hardware where they could better compete in the Fortune 1000. That strategy would eventually kill the company, resulting in the largest corporate collapse in the history of the world at the time.


But in the meantime, tens of thousands of businesses, millions of students, accountants, engineers, scientists, and programmers throughout the world that depended on the 2200, watched in horror as their favorite computer was choked to death to make room for Wang’s vainglorious new vision. The betrayal was complete—there was no off ramp for 2200 users. Their programs would not run on the new line of hardware—but IBM’s would. Wang decided it was better to be IBM than Wang, and they attempted to erase the “shameful” computer that had been part of their success.
There was nothing 2200 users could do about it—Wang was taking the 2200 and its language off life support. It dispersed the 2200’s teams of creators. A few years later, both Wang Labs and its visionary creator were dead. So, it seemed, was the wonderful Basic-2 language.