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Wang Laboratories

Wang Laboratories was a US computer company founded in 1951 by An Wang and G. Y. Chu. The company was successively headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1954–1963), Tewksbury, Massachusetts (1963–1976), and finally in Lowell, Massachusetts (1976–1997). At its peak in the 1980s, Wang Laboratories had annual revenues of US$3 billion and employed over 33,000 people. It was one of the leading companies during the time of the Massachusetts Miracle.

The company was directed by An Wang, who was described as an "indispensable leader" and played a personal role in setting business and product strategy until his death in 1990. The company went through transitions between different product lines, beginning with typesetters, calculators, and word processors, then adding computers, copiers, and laser printers.

Wang Laboratories filed for bankruptcy protection in August 1992. After emerging from bankruptcy, the company changed its name to Wang Global. It was acquired by Getronics of the Netherlands in 1999, becoming Getronics North America, then was sold to KPN in 2007 and CompuCom in 2008.

Public stock listing
Wang went public on August 26, 1967, with the issuance of 240,000 shares at $12.50 per share on the American Stock Exchange. The stock closed the day above $40, valuing the company's equity at approximately $77 million, of which An Wang and his family owned about 63%.

An Wang took steps to ensure that the Wang family would retain control of the company even after going public. He created a second class of stock, class B, with higher dividends but only one-tenth the voting power of class C. The public mostly bought class B shares; the Wang family retained most of the class C shares. The letters B and C were used to ensure that brokerages would fill any Wang stock orders with class B shares unless class C was specifically requested. Wang stock had been listed on the New York Stock Exchange, but this maneuver was not quite acceptable under NYSE's rules, and Wang was forced to delist with NYSE and relist on the more liberal American Stock Exchange. After Wang's 1992 bankruptcy, holders of class B and C common stock were treated the same.

Typesetters
The company's first major project was the Linasec in 1964, an electronic special-purpose computer designed to justify paper tape for use on automated Linotype machines. It was developed under contract to phototypesetter manufacturer Compugraphic, which retained the manufacturing rights of the Linasec. The success of the machine led Compugraphic to decide to manufacture it themselves, causing Wang to lose out on a million dollars in revenue.

Calculators
The Wang LOCI-2 (Logarithmic Computing Instrument) desktop calculator (the earlier LOCI-1 in September 1964 was not a real product) was introduced in January 1965. Using factor combining, it was the first desktop calculator capable of computing logarithms, which was quite an achievement for a machine without any integrated circuits. The electronics included 1,275 discrete transistors. It performed multiplication by adding logarithms, and roundoff in the display conversion was noticeable: 2 × 2 yielded 3.999999999.

From 1965 to about 1971, Wang was a well-regarded calculator company. The dollar price of Wang calculators was in the mid-four-figures. They used Nixie tube readouts, performed transcendental functions, had varying degrees of programmability, and used magnetic core memory. The 200 and 300 calculator models were available as time-shared simultaneous (SE) packages that had a central processing unit the size of a small suitcase connected by cables leading to four individual desktop display/keyboard units. Competition included HP, which introduced the HP 9100A in 1968, and old-line calculator companies such as Monroe and Marchant.

Wang calculators were at first sold to scientists and engineers, but the company later became established in financial services industries, which had relied on complicated printed tables for mortgages and annuities.

In 1971, Wang believed that calculators would become unprofitable low-margin commodities and decided to leave the calculator business within a few years.

The Wang 1200
Wang's first attempt at a word processor was the Wang 1200, announced in late 1971 but not available until 1972. The design consisted of the logic of a Wang 500 calculator hooked up to an OEM-manufactured IBM Selectric typewriter for keying and printing, and dual cassette decks for storage. Harold Koplow, who had written the microcode for the Wang 700 and its derivative the Wang 500 rewrote the microcode to perform word processing functions instead of numerical calculations.

The operator of a Wang 1200 typed text on a conventional IBM Selectric keyboard; when the Return key was pressed, the line of text was stored on a cassette tape. One cassette held roughly 20 pages of text and could be "played back" (e.g., the text retrieved) by printing the contents on continuous-form paper in the 1200 typewriter's "print" mode. The stored text could also be edited using keys on a simple, six-key array. Basic editing functions included Insert, Delete, Skip (character, line), and so on.

The labor and cost savings of this device were immediate and remarkable: pages of text no longer had to be retyped to correct simple errors, and projects could be worked on, stored, and then retrieved for use later on. The rudimentary Wang 1200 machine was the precursor of the Wang Office Information System (OIS), which revolutionized the way typing projects were performed in the American workplace.

Wang OIS
Following the Wang 1200, Harold Koplow and David Moros made another attempt at designing a word processor. They started by first writing the user's manual for the product. A 2002 Boston Globe article refers to Koplow as a "wisecracking rebel" who "was waiting for dismissal when, in 1975, he developed the product that made computers popularly accessible."

In Koplow's words, "Dr. Wang kicked me out of marketing. I, along with Dave Moros, was relegated to Long Range Planning – 'LRPed'. This ... was tantamount to being fired: 'here is a temporary job until you find another one in some other company.'"

Although he and Moros perceived the assignment to design a word processing machine as busywork, they went ahead anyway. They wrote the manual and convinced An Wang to turn it into a real project. The word processing machine – the Wang 1200 WPS – was introduced in June 1976 and was an instant success, as was its successor, the 1977 Wang OIS (Office Information System).

The OIS was a multi-user system. Each workstation looked like a typical terminal but contained its own Intel 8080 microprocessor (later versions used a Z80) and 64 KB of RAM (less than the original 1981 IBM PC). Disk storage was centralized in a master unit and shared by the workstations, and the connection was via high-speed dual coaxial cable "928 Link".

Copiers/printers
Ahead of IBM and Xerox, Wang captured the lead for "the 'intelligent' printer: a high-speed office copier that can be linked electronically" to PCs "and other automated equipment". A year later, The New York Times described the IBM 6670 Information Distributor as "closer to the standard envisioned".

Wang 3300
Wang's first computer, the Wang 3300, was an 8-bit integrated circuit general-purpose minicomputer designed to be the central processor for a multi-terminal time-sharing system. Byte-oriented, it also provided a number of double-byte operand memory commands. Core memory ranged from 4,096 to 65,536 bytes in 4,096-byte increments.

Development began after hiring Rick Bensene in June 1968. The product was announced in February 1969 and shipped to its first customer on March 29, 1971.

Wang 2200
Wang developed and marketed several lines of small computer systems for both word processing and data processing. Instead of a clear, linear progression, the product lines overlapped and, in some cases, borrowed technology from each other.

The most identifiable Wang minicomputer performing recognizable data processing was the Wang 2200, which appeared in May 1973. Unlike some other desktop computers such as the HP 9830, it had a CRT in a cabinet that also included an integrated computer-controlled compact cassette storage unit and keyboard. It was microcoded to run interpreted Wang BASIC. It was widely used in small- and medium-sized businesses worldwide; about 65,000 systems were shipped.

The original 2200 was a single-user system. The improved VP model increased performance more than tenfold and enhanced the language (renamed BASIC-2). The 2200 VP evolved into a desktop computer and larger MVP system to support up to 16 workstations and utilized commercial disk technologies that appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The disk subsystems could be attached to up to 15 computers giving a theoretical upper limit of 240 workstations in a single cluster.

Unlike the other product lines, such as the VS and OIS (described below), Wang used value-added resellers (VARs) to customize and market 2200 systems. One such creative solution deployed dozens of 2200 systems and was developed in conjunction with Hawaii- and Hong Kong–based firm Algorithms, Inc. It provided paging (beeper) services for much of the Hong Kong market in the early 1980s.

Overshadowed by the Wang VS, the 2200 languished as a cost-effective but forgotten solution in the hands of the customers who had it. In the late 1980s, Wang revisited the 2200 series one last time, offering 2200 customers a new 2200 CS with bundled maintenance for less than customers were paying at the time just for maintenance of their aging 2200s. The 2200 CS had an Intel 386 processor, updated disk units, and other peripherals. Most 2200 customers upgraded to the 2200 CS, after which Wang did not develop or market any new 2200 products. In 1997, Wang reported having about two hundred 2200 systems still under maintenance around the world. Throughout, Wang had always offered maintenance services for the 2200.

The 2200 BASIC-2 language was ported to be compiled and run on non-Wang hardware and operating systems by at least two companies. Niakwa Inc created a product named NPL (originally named Basic-2C). Kerridge Computer, now a part of ADP, created a product named KCML. Both products support DOS, Windows, and various Unix systems. The BASIC-2 language was enhanced and extended by both companies to meet modern needs. Compared to the 2200 Wang hardware, the compiled solutions improved speed, disk space, memory, and user limits by tens to hundreds of times; although there is no Wang support for the 2200, many software applications continue to function.

During the 1970s, about 2,000 Wang 2200T computers were shipped to the USSR. Due to the Afghan war in the 1980s, US and COCOM export restrictions ended the shipment of Wang computers. The Soviets were in great need of computers. In 1981, Russian engineers at Minpribor's Schetmash factory in Kursk reverse engineered the Wang 2200T and created a computer they named the Iskra 226. The "COCOM restrictions" theory, though, while popular in the West, is challenged by some Russian computer historians on the basis that development for the Iskra-226 started in 1978, two years before the Afghan war. It is also different from the Wang 2200 in its internals, being more inspired by it rather than a direct clone.

It used the same BASIC language (named T-BASIC) with a few enhancements. Many research papers reference calculations done on the Iskra 226. The machine's designers were nominated for a 1985 State Prize. Later, a somewhat scaled-down Unix implementation was created for Iskra-226, which was used in the Soviet Union.

Wang OIS
Wang had a line called Alliance, which was based on the high-end OIS (140/145) hardware architecture. It had more powerful software than the OIS word processing and list processing packages. The system was Tempest certified, leading to global deployment in American embassies after the Iran hostage crisis. The Z80 platform on which Alliance ran forced it to remain as an 8-bit application in a 64 KB workstation.

The Wang VS computer line
The first Wang VS computer was introduced in 1977, the same year as Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX; both continued for decades. The VS instruction set was compatible with the IBM System/360 series, but it did not run any System/360 system software.

Software
The VS operating system and all system software were built from the ground up to support interactive users as well as batch operations. The VS was aimed at the business data processing market in general and IBM in particular. While many programming languages were available, the VS was programmed in COBOL. Other languages supported in the VS integrated development environment included Assembler, COBOL 74, COBOL 85, BASIC, Ada, RPG II, C, PL/I, FORTRAN, Glossary, MABASIC, SPEED II, and Procedure (a scripting language). Pascal was also supported for I/O co-processor development. The Wang PACE (Professional Application Creation Environment) 4GL and database was used from the mid-1980s onward by customers and third-party developers to build complex applications, sometimes involving many thousands of screens, hundreds of distinct application modules, and serving many hundreds of users. Substantial vertical applications were developed for the Wang VS by third-party software houses throughout the 1980s in COBOL, PACE, BASIC, PL/I, and RPG II. The Wang OFFICE family of applications and Wang WP were both popular applications on the VS. Word Processing ran on the VS through services that emulated the OIS environment and downloaded the WP software as "microcode" (in Wang terminology) to VS workstations.

Hardware
The press and the industry referred to the class of machines made by Wang, including the VS, as "minicomputers,"  and Kenney's 1992 book refers to the VS line as "minicomputers" throughout. Although some argue that the high-end VS machines and their successors should qualify as mainframes, Wang avoided this term. In his autobiography, An Wang, rather than calling the VS 300 a mainframe, said that it "verges on mainframe performance." He went on to draw the distinction between the "mainframes" at the high end of IBM's line ("just as Detroit would rather sell large cars ... so IBM would rather sell mainframes")—in which IBM had a virtual monopoly—with the "mid-sized systems" in which IBM had not achieved dominance: "The minicomputer market is still healthy. This is good for the customer and good for minicomputer makers."
 * The VS7000 was introduced in 1987. These were a renumbering of the VS100 and VS300, with their more powerful counterpart upgrades identified as VS7110, VS7120, and VS7130 (for the VS100) as the new high-end machine in this series.

 * Later models, the small VS5000 series, launched in 1988, were user-installable, with the smallest being similarly sized to contemporary PCs.
 * The largest iteration, the VS10000, supported many users. The VS10000 used "emitter coupled logic" (ECL). ECL is a very fast current-based logic that necessitates the use of 375 amp, 3-volt power supplies, massive heat-sinks, and large squirrel cage blowers. The VS1000 computer drew up to ten kilowatts of power. The VS1000 was designed to run multiple concurrent operating systems and was piloted with the VS ver7 and a Unix operating system.

Going after IBM
An Wang felt a personal sense of rivalry with IBM, partly due to heavy-handed treatment by IBM in 1955 to 1956 over the rights to his magnetic-core patents (this encounter formed the subject of a long chapter in Wang's own book, Lessons). According to Charles C. Kenney, "Jack Connors remembers being in Wang's office one day when the Doctor pulled out a chart on which he had plotted Wang's growth and projected that Wang Laboratories would overtake IBM sometime in the middle of the 1990s. 'He had kept it a long time,' says Connors. 'And he believed it.'"

Wang was one of the first computer companies to advertise on television and the first to run an ad during the Super Bowl in 1978. Their first ad literally cast Wang Laboratories as David and IBM as Goliath, several years before the famous 1984 Apple Computer ad. A later ad depicted Wang Laboratories as a helicopter gunship taking aim at IBM.

Wang wanted to compete against IBM as a computer company, selling to management information system departments. The calculators, word processing systems, and OIS were sold into individual departments, bypassing the corporate data-processing decision-makers. The chapter in Wang's book dealing with them shows that he saw them as "a beachhead in the Fortune 1000." The Wang VS was Wang's entry into IT departments. In his book, An Wang notes that, to sell the VS, "we aggressively recruited salesmen with strong backgrounds in data processing ... who had experience dealing with MIS executives, and who knew their way around Fortune 1000 companies." As the VS took hold, the word processor and OIS lines were phased out. The word processing software continued, in the form of a loadable-microcode environment that allowed VS workstations to take on the behavior of traditional Wang WP terminals to operate with the VS and use it as a document server.

Wang made inroads into IBM and DEC markets in the 1980s, but did not have a serious impact on IBM's mainframe market due to self-limiting factors. Even though An Wang wanted to compete with IBM, too many Wang salespeople weren't trained enough on the DP capabilities of the VS. In many instances, the VS ran smaller enterprises up to about $$500 million$ and, in larger organizations, found use as a gateway to larger corporate mainframes, handling workstation pass-through and massive print services.

At Exxon Corporation, for instance, thirteen 1985 top-of-the-line VS300s at the Houston headquarters were used in the 1980s and into the 1990s to receive mainframe reports and make them viewable online by executives.

At Mellon Mortgage, 18 VS systems from the smallest to the largest were used as the enterprise mortgage origination, servicing, finance, documentation, hedge system and mainframe gateway services (for login and printing). Between Mellon Mortgage and parent Mellon Bank, their network contained 45 VS systems and the Bank portion of the network supported about 16,000 Wang Office users for email, report distribution, and scheduling.

At Kent and KTec Electronics, two related Houston companies, separate VS clusters were the enterprise systems, handling distribution, manufacturing, and accounting, with significant EDI capability for receiving customer forecasts, sending invoices, sending purchase orders, and receiving shipping notifications. Both systems ran the GEISCO EDI package. Kent, which grew to $$600 million$, ran the Arcus distribution software in COBOL and KTec, which grew to $$250 million$, ran the CAELUS MRP system for manufacturing in BASIC.

Aggressive marketing
In the late 1980s, a British television documentary accused the company of targeting a competitor, Canadian company AES Wordplex, in an attempt to take it out of the market. However, the documentary came to no conclusion regarding this.

Wang's approach was called "The Gas Cooker Program," named after similar programs to give discounts on new gas stoves by trading in an old one. Wang was accused of targeting Wordplex by offering a large discount on Wang OIS systems with a trade-in of Wordplex machines, regardless of the age or condition of the trade-in machine.

Based on its good reputation with users and its program of aggressive discounts, Wang gained an increasing share of a shrinking market. Wordplex was taken over by Norsk Data.

Word processing market collapse
The market for standalone word processing systems collapsed with the introduction of the personal computer. MultiMate, on the IBM PC, and MS-DOS PC clones, replicated the keyboard and screen interface and functions of the Wang word processor, and was actively marketed to Wang corporate users, while several other WYSIWYG word processing programs also became popular.

Wang did make one last play in this arena, producing a dedicated Intel-based word processor called the Wang Office Assistant in 1984. This was marketed and sold successfully in the UK to a specific few office equipment dealers who were able to upgrade their clients from electronic typewriters to the Office Assistant. They proved to be very reliable and fast when connected to the Wang bi-directional printer, providing cheap but very fast word processing to small companies (such as solicitors). The USA was surprised at the success of this machine in the UK, but could not supply a spell-check programme in time before the PC. The PC, with its flexibility of combining word processors with other programs such as spreadsheets, had rendered such a specific-task machine unsellable. The Wang Office Assistant had a short life span of four years.

The Digital Voice Exchange
The Wang DVX was one of the first integrated switchboard and voicemail systems. In the United Kingdom, it was selected for the DTI Office Automation pilot schemes at the National Coal Board in about 1980.

Wang, which had added DVX Message Waiting in 1984, named their 1989 announcement DVX II.

Internal research on speech recognition was carried out and implemented for discrete word recognition but was never released to the field. At one point there were 50 members of the Voice Engineering Department.

Lawrence E. Bergeron was instrumental in managing the Voice Engineering Department at Wang Labs. He promoted the purchase of a VAX-11/780 for 'real-time' signal processing research and created the Peripheral Signal Processor board (PSP). The PSP was placed into 16 racks to handle 128 phone lines for the DVX (Digital Voice Exchange). Wang's Digital Voice Exchange supported the renting of voice mailboxes. Voice prompts were created by a hired voice specialist to give a melodic presentation for the DVX. To avoid false triggering of touch-tones by the prompts (due to input/output cross talk), notch filters were created to remove the touch tone frequencies from the prompts. Prompt languages supported included German, Spanish, French, British English, American English, and Portuguese.

PCs and PC-based products
Despite the release of the 2200 PCS (Personal Computer System) and 2200 PCS-II models in 1976, the history of computing regards the earliest PC as one which contained a microprocessor, which the 2200 PCS did not. However, the self-contained PCS-II incorporated many of the innovations that would later be seen in PCs, including the first 5.25-inch floppy drives that were designed for the PCS-II by Shugart Associates.

The original Wang PC
The original Wang PC was released in April 1982 to counter the IBM PC, which had been released the previous August and which had gained wide acceptance in the market for which Wang traditionally positioned the OIS system. It was based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor, a faster CPU than the IBM PC's 8088. A hardware/software package that permitted the Wang PC to act as a terminal to the OIS and VS products was available. The first version of the hardware component was made of two large add-in boards called the WLOC (Wang Local Office Connection). It contained a Z-80 processor and 64 KB of memory. The original PC-VS hardware used the 928 terminal emulator board; the WLOC boards were used in the subsequent 80286 machines.

These PCs later formed the basis for the system console on VS7000 and later series of the Wang mid-frame series, being used for the initialisation of the boot process. One of the distinguishing features of the Wang PC was the system software. Similar to the Wang VS minicomputer, the command line was not evident. Everything could be run from menus, including formatting a disk. Furthermore, each item on a menu could be explained by hitting a help key on the keyboard. This software was later sold in MS-DOS-compatible form for non-Wang hardware. The Wang word processing software was also very graphical. The keyboard had 16 function-keys and, unlike WordStar (the popular word processor of the day), control key combinations were not required to navigate the system. The F-keys had the word processing functions labeled on them.

Despite being a compliant MS-DOS system, it was not compatible with the IBM PC at the hardware level, because MS-DOS was used as a simple program loader. Complex software (spreadsheets, Flight Simulator, etc.) could obtain acceptable performance by direct manipulation of the hardware. Wang used a 16-bit data bus instead of the 8-bit data bus used by IBM, arguing that applications would run much faster since most operations required I/O (disk, screen, keyboard, printer). With this 16-bit design, Wang used peripheral hardware devices, such as the Wang PC display adapter, that were not compatible with their counterparts in the IBM PC line. This meant that the vast library of software available for the IBM PC could not be directly run on the Wang PC. Only those programs that were either written for the Wang PC or ported from the IBM PC were available. Lotus 1-2-3 and dBase II were also available. This lack of application software led to the original Wang PC's end, and it was replaced by an Intel 80286-based product that was plug compatible with the IBM PC. The unique system software was available at extra cost.

Most Wang PCs were released with a monochrome graphics adapter that supported a single video mode with text and graphics planes that could be scrolled independently. A color graphics adapter and Wang-branded color monitor were also available.

An ergonomic feature of the Wang PC was the monitor arm that clamped to the desk and held the monitor above and a system clamp that attached to the side of the desk and held the rather large computer box. By using these, there was nothing on the desktop except the keyboard.

IBM-compatible Wang PCs
Wang released an emulation board for Wang PC that enabled operation of many PC-compatible software packages. The board accomplished this by monitoring all I/O and memory transactions (visible in those days before North/South bridge chips to any board plugged into a slot on the expansion bus) and generating a non-maskable interrupt (NMI) whenever an operation was deemed to involve an incompatible device, requiring emulation.

For example, the floppy controller circuitry on the Wang PC was similar to that of the IBM PC but involved enough design differences that PC-compatible software attempting to manipulate it directly would fail. Wang's PC emulation hardware would detect I/O and memory operations involving the addresses associated with the floppy controller in the IBM PC and generate an NMI. The NMI handler would be activated (the exception vector having been appropriated during system init to point to ROM routines on the emulation board instead of the NMI routine in the PC BIOS) and would then update an internal representation of the IBM PC floppy controller and manipulate the real controller to reflect its state. Reads were satisfied in a similar way, by forcing an NMI, decoding the machine code indicated by the instruction pointer at the time of the fault, and then obtaining the desired info and updating the CPU registers accordingly before resuming the executing program.

IBM PC-emulation on the 8086-based Wang PC was working well when IBM released their 80286-based PC-AT, so Wang made the 80286-based Wang APC (Advanced Professional Computer).

Further iterations of the PC line were released commencing with the model number PC-240. They booted into MS-DOS or another compatible operating system, and supported ISA-standard expansion cards.

This PC-240 was still not IBM PC-standard, as the keyboard, although a standard PC/AT device, supported VS-compatibility with 24 function keys rather than the normal 12, and had a number of Wang VS-specific keys. There was also a slight difference in CPU interrupts from IBM standard, so some software had compatibility issues.

VS connectivity was via an ISA-based VS-terminal card, or via LightSpeed, the networked VS Terminal Emulator, over an IPX-based Ethernet connection. The PC-240 came with a Wang-specific Hercules Graphics Card and compatible screen, which also acted as a keyboard extension, so that the base unit could be kept some distance from the screen. This was later replaced with an EGA card and screen.

Around 1991, Wang released the PC350-16 and PC350-40, which were Intel 80386-based, clocked at 16 MHz and 40 MHz. They used the same VS-compatible keyboard as the PC-240, had a maximum of 4 megabytes of RAM, and came with VGA screens as standard. They were supplied by Microsoft with MS-DOS and Windows 3.0.

The 350-16 had a bug where the machine would freeze and not boot up if power-cycled at the mains. Although it would power on, the BIOS would not start. The solution was to turn on the machine at the mains and hold down the power button for 30 seconds, at which point it would start. It was suggested that this was due to an under-valued capacitor in the power circuit. This problem appeared to be resolved in the 350–40, which had a different PSU.

In 1992, Wang marketed a PC-compatible based on the Intel 80386SX processor, which they called the Alliance 750CD. It was clocked at 25 MHz and had a socket for an 80387 math coprocessor. It came with 2 megabytes of installed RAM, and was expandable to 16 megabytes using SIMM memory cards. It had a 1.44 megabyte floppy disk drive, an internal 80 megabyte hard disk, and a CD-ROM drive. Five expansion slots were built-in. It came with MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 operating systems.

In 1994, Wang released the slimline Alliance 750CD 80486 based PC in the United Kingdom. These machines used standard PC/AT keyboards and were IBM compatible, shipping with MSDOS 5.0 and Windows 3.11 as standard. System BIOS settings and the real-time clock were maintained by four standard AA batteries instead of a specialty battery pack or lithium battery. While offered with a 33 MHz 80486DX, the 750CD could be upgraded to later Socket 3 processors such as the 80486DX2 through the use of third party CPU upgrade adapters or interposers. This allowed upgrading to speeds beyond 50 MHz without overclocking, or more than 100 MHz with overclocking, dependent on the processor used.

Wang Freestyle
Wang Freestyle was a 1988 product consisting of:
 * A touch-sensitive tablet and a special stylus for written annotation of any file that could be displayed on the PC.
 * A phone handset for voice annotation, but not voice communication. Demonstrated with the tablet for explaining the text annotations.
 * Email, via Wang OFFICE, of the resulting document set.

The pricing of the low-end product at US$2000 precluded the important features such as "facsimile and voice options" (priced at US$12000). Freestyle was not a success in anything except marketing terms. A description of the system at the University of Southern California (USC) shows the symptoms of the failure:

''The US$1.2 million USC system includes a VS 7150 mid-range computer; 30 image workstations, 25 with Freestyle capabilities; a laser printer; five endorsers; and five document scanners. Initial storage for document images is eight gigabytes of magnetic disk storage.''

25 of the stations were Freestyle stations. The Freestyle was only affordable for highly specialized or very senior staff in Wang Laboratories. It was sold as a C-Level tool for C grades to communicate with other C Grades. This reduced the marketplace immediately from the mass market, where the system would have been effective.

Decline and fall
Wang Labs was one of a large number of New England–based computer companies that faltered in the late 1980s and 1990s, marking the end of the Massachusetts Miracle. For instance, the struggling Digital Equipment Corporation also downsized in the 1990s and was acquired by Compaq.

A common view within the PC community is that Wang Labs failed because it specialized in computers designed specifically for word processing and did not foresee and could not compete with general-purpose personal computers with word-processing software in the 1980s. Word processing was not actually the mainstay of Wang's business by the time desktop computers began to gain in popularity. Although Wang manufactured desktops, its main business by the 1980s was its VS line of minicomputer and "midframe" systems. The market for these minicomputers was conquered by enhanced microcomputers like the Apple Macintosh and the Wintel PC and Sun, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard servers.

An Wang's insistence that his sons, Frederick and Courtney, would succeed him contributed to the company's failure. Fred Wang was a business school graduate, "but by almost any definition", wrote Charles C. Kenney, "unsuited for the job in which his father had placed him." His assignment, first as head of research and development, then as president of the company, led to resignations by key R&D and business personnel. Amid declining revenues, John F. Cunningham, an 18-year employee of the firm, resigned as president and COO of Wang Labs to become chairman and chief executive of Computer Consoles Inc. Cunningham resigned due to disagreement with An Wang on how to pull the company out of the slump, as well as being upset that Fred Wang was positioned, nepotistically, as An Wang's successor.

One turning point occurred when Fred Wang was head of R&D. On October 4, 1983, Wang Laboratories announced fourteen major hardware and software products and promised dates of delivery. The announcement was well received, but even at the time, there were warning signs. According to Datamation, Wang announced "everything but the kitchen sink. And if you could attach the kitchen sink to a personal computer, they would announce that too." Very few of the products were close to completion, and many of them had not even been started. All were delivered late, if at all. In retrospect, this was referred to as the "vaporware announcement," and it hurt the credibility of Fred Wang and Wang Laboratories.

In 1986, Fred Wang, then 36 years old, was installed as president and chief operating officer of Wang Laboratories. However, the company's fortunes continued to decline, although Charles Kenney "did not lay the failure at Fred's feet, but his father's, saying his father leaned too hard on family considering the sophistication of the company", as the market underwent great upheaval where minicomputers gave way to microcomputers. Unlike most computer companies that funded their growth by issuing stock, An Wang had used debt to avoid further dilution of family control of the company. By August 1989, that debt was causing conflicts with its creditors. On August 4, 1989, An Wang requested Fred's resignation, although Fred remained a member of the board of directors. Harry H.S. Chou, a vice chairman and director of the international computer maker, became acting president and served in that role until Richard W. Miller, who had been with the company since 1988, was named president of Wang Laboratories. Fred went on to attend the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, planning a new career in public service. While Courtney, An Wang's younger son, still remained with the company and had ambitions to eventually take over, he was only "a 33-year-old branch manager in the Dallas office and hardly a major player", plus Miller's contract "stipulated that he would never be subordinate to anyone at Wang Labs other than Dr. Wang.".

Miller announced in December 1989 that the company would start to embrace established software standards rather than use traditional proprietary designs. An Wang died in March 1990, and Miller took on the additional posts of chairman and CEO. The company underwent massive restructuring and layoffs and eliminated its bank debt in August 1990, but it still ended the year with a record net loss.

In November 1990, Wang announced their first personal computers running Unix. In 1987, Wang developed a new typesetting system in conjunction with Arlington, MA–based Texet Corp. The system used Xerox printers and UNIX workstations from Sun, but the product vanished before coming to market, because few Wang employees could use or support UNIX. UNIX ran on the VS – Interactive Systems first ported IN/ix (their IBM 360 version of SYS5 UNIX) to run in a VSOS Virtual machine circa 1985, and then Wang engineers completed the port so that it ran "native" on the VS hardware soon thereafter – but performance was always sub-par as UNIX was never a good fit for the batch-mode nature of the VS hardware, and the line-at-a-time processing approach taken by the VS workstations; indeed, the workstation code had to be rewritten to bundle up each keystroke into a frame to be sent back to the host when running UNIX so that "tty" style processing could be implemented. PACE, which offered its data dictionary, excellent referential integrity, and speedy application development, was in the process of being ported to UNIX under the name OPEN Pace. A client-server RDBMS model built on the original product's ideology, OPEN Pace was demonstrated at the North American PACE User Group Conferences in both Boston and Chicago. OPEN Pace, along with a new Windows-based word processor called UpWord (which was at the time considered a strong contender to retake Wang's original market leadership from Microsoft), were touted as their new direction. However, after a marketing study suggested that it would require large capital investments in order to be viable competitors against Microsoft, both products were abandoned.

Ira Magaziner, who was brought in by Miller in 1990, proposed to take Wang out of the manufacture of computers altogether, and to go big into imaging software instead. In March 1991, the company introduced its Office 2000 marketing strategy, focusing on office productivity.

In June 1991, Wang started reselling IBM computers, in exchange for IBM investing in Wang stock. Wang hardware strategy to re-sell IBM RS/6000s also included further pursuit of UNIX software.

In August 1991, Wang won a suit against NEC and Toshiba claiming violation of Wang's patents on single in-line memory modules (SIMMs). The company still recorded a net loss for the 1991 fiscal year.

Wang Laboratories filed for bankruptcy protection on August 18, 1992, at a time when the company's attempted concession from proprietary to open systems was deemed by some analysts as "too little and too late."

Final years
Wang Labs emerged from bankruptcy on September 20, 1993. As part of its bankruptcy reorganization, the company's iconic headquarters, Wang Towers in Lowell, was sold at auction. The complex, which cost $60 million to build and housed 4,500 workers in over a million square feet (100,000 m2) of office space, was sold in 1994 for $525,000. The renovated complex, which is now known as Cross Point, was sold in 1998 to a joint venture of Yale Properties and Blackstone Real Estate Advisors for a price reported to be over $100 million.

The company emerged from bankruptcy with $200 million in hand and embarked on a course of acquisition and self-reinvention, eschewing its former role as an innovative designer and manufacturer of computers and related systems. Later in the 1990s, and under the guidance of then CEO Joe Tucci, with the acquisition of the Olsy division of Olivetti, the company changed its name to Wang Global. By then, Wang had settled on "network services" as its chosen business.

The most advanced VS system, capable of supporting over 1,000 users – the VS18000 Model 950 – was released in 1999, and smaller models based on the same CPU chip were released in 2000 – the VS6760 and the VS6780. These were the last VS-based hardware systems.

Kodak acquired the Wang Software arm in 1997, strengthening its position in the then-booming document imaging and workflow market.

In 1999, Wang Global, by then back up to $3.5 billion in annual revenues, was acquired by Getronics of The Netherlands, a $1.5 billion network services company active only in parts of Europe and Australia. Joe Tucci departed Wang after the acquisition. Wang Labs then became Getronics North America.

In 2005, Getronics announced New VS (VSGX), a product designed to run the VS operating system and all VS software on Intel 80x86 and IBM POWER machines under Linux or Unix, using a hardware abstraction layer. The product was a joint commercial effort of Getronics and TransVirtual Systems, developers of the Wang VS virtualization technology that makes the New VS possible. VS software can be run under New VS without program or data conversion. The New VS combines configured mainstream PC or PowerPC server hardware running virtualization software. It is interoperable with SCSI-based Wang VS tape and disk drives, which provide a means of restoring VS files from standard backup tapes or copying VS disk drives. Wang networking and clustering are supported over TCP/IP.

In 2007, Getronics operations worldwide were divided and sold to companies in respective local geographies. Dutch telecommunications operator KPN acquired Getronics in North America and some parts of Europe. In July 2008, Getronics North America (now an arm of KPN) announced the ending of support for the legacy VS line as existing contracts expired, and that TransVirtual Systems would be exclusive reseller of the New VS platform. In August 2008, KPN sold Getronics North America to CompuCom of Dallas, Texas.

The Wang VS product line, not actively marketed since the 1993 bankruptcy and a tiny portion of the Getronics business, survived in use into the 21st century; by 2006, about 1,000 to 2,000 systems remained in service worldwide. In 2014, CompuCom announced that all support for legacy VS systems would cease at the end of 2014, while support for New VS systems would continue through TransVirtual Systems.

title: Wang Laboratories


text:
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Anne Spencer Morrow Lindbergh (June 22, 1906 – February 7, 2001) was an American writer and aviator. She was the wife of decorated pioneer aviator Charles Lindbergh, with whom she made many exploratory flights.

Raised in Englewood, New Jersey, and later New York City, Anne Morrow graduated from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1928. She married Charles in 1929, and in 1930 became the first woman to receive a U.S. glider pilot license. Throughout the early 1930s, she served as radio operator and copilot to Charles on multiple exploratory flights and aerial surveys. Following the 1932 kidnapping and murder of their first-born infant child, Anne and Charles moved to Europe in 1935 to escape the American press and hysteria surrounding the case, where their views shifted during the preliminary time of World War II towards an alleged sympathy for Nazi Germany and a concern for the United States’ ability to compete with Germany in the war with their opposing air power. When they returned to America in 1939, the couple supported the isolationist America First Committee before ultimately expressing public support for the U.S. war effort after the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequent German declaration of war against the United States.

After the war, she moved away from politics and wrote extensive poetry and nonfiction that helped the Lindberghs regain their reputation, which had been greatly damaged since the days leading up to the war. She authored the popular Gift from the Sea (1955), and became an inspirational figure for many American women. According to Publishers Weekly, the book was one of the top nonfiction bestsellers of the 1950s. After suffering a series of strokes throughout the 1990s that left her disoriented and disabled, Anne died in 2001 at the age of 94.

Early life
Anne Spencer Morrow was born on June 22, 1906, in Englewood, New Jersey. Her father was Dwight Morrow, a partner in J.P. Morgan & Co., who became United States Ambassador to Mexico and United States Senator from New Jersey. Her mother, Elizabeth Cutter Morrow, was a poet and teacher, active in women's education, who served as acting president of her alma mater Smith College.

Anne was the second of four children; her siblings were Elisabeth Reeve, Dwight, Jr., and Constance. The children were raised in a Calvinist household that fostered achievement. Every night, Morrow's mother would read to her children for an hour. The children quickly learned to read and write, began reading to themselves, and writing poetry and diaries. Anne would later benefit from that routine, eventually publishing her later diaries to critical acclaim.

She first attended the Dwight School for Girls in Englewood. After graduating from The Chapin School in New York City in 1924, where she was president of the student body, she attended Smith College from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1928.

She received the Elizabeth Montagu Prize, for her essay on women of the 18th century such as Madame d'Houdetot, and the Mary Augusta Jordan Literary Prize, for her fictional piece "Lida Was Beautiful".

Marriage and family
Morrow and Lindbergh met on December 21, 1927, in Mexico City. Her father, Lindbergh's financial adviser at J. P. Morgan and Co., invited him to Mexico to advance good relations between it and the United States.

At the time, Morrow was a shy 21-year-old senior at Smith College. Lindbergh was a high-profile aviator whose solo flight across the Atlantic made him a hero of immense proportions. The sight of the boyish aviator, who was staying with the Morrows, tugged at Morrow's heartstrings. She would later write in her diary: "He is taller than anyone else—you see his head in a moving crowd and you notice his glance, where it turns, as though it were keener, clearer, and brighter than anyone else's, lit with a more intense fire.... What could I say to this boy? Anything I might say would be trivial and superficial, like pink frosting flowers. I felt the whole world before this to be frivolous, superficial, ephemeral."

They were married in a private ceremony on May 27, 1929, at the home of her parents in Englewood, New Jersey.

That year, Anne Lindbergh flew solo for the first time, and in 1930, she became the first American woman to earn a first-class glider pilot's license. In the 1930s, Charles and Anne explored and charted air routes between continents together. The Lindberghs were the first to fly from Africa to South America and explored polar air routes from North America to Asia and Europe.

Their first child, Charles Jr., was born on Anne's 24th birthday, June 22, 1930.

Kidnapping of son
On March 1, 1932, the Lindberghs' first child, 20-month-old Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., was kidnapped from their home, Highfields, in East Amwell, New Jersey, outside Hopewell. Arriving at the Lindbergh home police began the first search into the disappearance of young Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., there police witnessed two clear sets of footprints outside of the Lindbergh home. One set specifically led southeast towards a ladder that was believed to be used in the abduction. Upon the discovery of intruders, police returned inside the home to begin their initial search of the nursery. Before calling the police Charles Lindbergh uncovered a plain white envelope located on the windowsill. Believing it was a ransom note, Charles left it for police inspection. Expert in crime-scene photography and fingerprints, Corporal Frank Kelly, was a part of the group that was investigating the disappearance of Charles Augustus Lindbergh. After processing the envelope for any evidence revealed a smudged fingerprint which would later be sent to the state official in charge, Major Schoeffel. Inside the envelope was a detailed ransom note from the kidnapper giving the Lindberghs guided instructions for the return of their child.

"Dear Sir! Have 50.000$ redy [sic] 25 000$ in 20$ bills 15000$ in 10$ bills and 10000$ in 5$ bills After 2–4 days we will inform you were [sic] to deliver the mony [sic]. We warn you for making anyding [sic] public or for notify the Police the child is in gut [sic] care. Indication for all letters are Singnature [sic] and 3 hohls [sic]."

After a massive investigation, a baby's body presumed to be that of Charles Lindbergh Jr. was discovered on May 12, 1932, some 4 miles (6.5 km) from the Lindbergh home, at the summit of a hill on the Hopewell–Mt. Rose highway.

Retreat to Europe
The press paid frenzied attention to the Lindberghs after the kidnapping of their son and the trial, conviction, and execution of Richard Hauptmann for the crime. This—and threats and press harassment of their second son Jon—prompted the family to retreat to the United Kingdom, to a house called Long Barn owned by Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, and later to the small island of Illiec, off the coast of Brittany in France.

While in Europe during the 1930s, the Lindberghs came to advocate isolationist views and an opposition to American involvement in the impending European conflict, which led to their fall from grace in the eyes of many and widespread suspicion that the couple might be Nazi sympathizers. There exists evidence to support that Anne was an admirer of Hitler and shared many of her husband's anti-immigrant and antisemitic views. Anne Morrow's work was part of the literature event in the art competition at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.

Return to U.S.
In April 1939, the Lindberghs returned to the United States. Because of his outspoken beliefs about a future war that would envelop their homeland, the antiwar America First Committee quickly adopted Charles as its leader in 1940.

In 1940, Anne published a 41-page booklet, The Wave of the Future: A Confession of Faith, which "swiftly became the No. 1 nonfiction bestseller in the country." Writing in support of her husband's lobbying efforts for a U.S.-German peace treaty similar to Hitler's Non-Aggression Treaty with Joseph Stalin, Anne argued that the rise of fascism and communism in Germany, Italy, and Russia were manifestations of an inevitable historical "wave of the future", though "the evils we deplore in these systems are not in themselves the future; they are scum on the wave of the future." She compared these movements to the French Revolution for their deplorable violence, but also for their "fundamental necessity". She therefore urged the futility of any ideological war against them. Her writing echoed authors such as Lawrence Dennis and presaged that of James Burnham.

The Roosevelt administration subsequently attacked The Wave of the Future as, in an April 1941 speech by Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, "the bible of every American Nazi, Fascist, Bundist and Appeaser," and the booklet became one of the most despised writings of the period. Anne had also written in a letter that Hitler was "a very great man, like an inspired religious leader—and as such rather fanatical—but not scheming, not selfish, not greedy for power".

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Germany's declaration of war against the U.S., the America First Committee disbanded, and Charles eventually managed to become involved in the military and enter combat only as a civilian consultant, flying 50 missions in this role and even shooting down an enemy aircraft.

In this period, Anne met the French writer, poet and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of the novella The Little Prince. Though Anne found "St-Ex" attractive, the two did not have a secret affair, as is sometimes erroneously reported.

The Lindberghs had five more children: sons Jon, Land, and Scott, and daughters Anne and Reeve.

Later years and death
After the war, Anne wrote books that helped the Lindberghs rebuild the reputations which they had lost before World War II. The publication of Gift from the Sea in 1955 earned her place as "one of the leading advocates of the nascent environmental movement" and became a national bestseller.

Over the course of their 45-year marriage, the Lindberghs lived in New Jersey, New York, the United Kingdom, France, Maine, Michigan, Connecticut, Switzerland, and Hawaii. Charles died on the island of Maui in 1974.

According to one biographer, Anne had a three-year affair in the early 1950s with her personal doctor.

According to Rudolf Schröck, author of Das Doppelleben des Charles A. Lindbergh ("The Double Life of Charles A. Lindbergh"), Anne was unaware that Charles had led a double life from 1957 until his death in 1974. His affair with Munich hat maker Brigitte Hesshaimer produced three children whom he supported financially. After Hesshaimer's passing in 2003, DNA tests conducted by the University of Munich proved that her three children were fathered by Lindbergh. Schröck reported that Brigitte's sister Marietta also bore him two sons. Lindbergh had two more children with his former private secretary. A family reconciliation with the German family members later took place with Reeve Lindbergh being actively involved.

After suffering a series of strokes that left her confused and disabled in the early 1990s, Anne continued to live in her home in Connecticut with the assistance of round-the-clock caregivers. During a visit to her daughter Reeve's family in 1999, she came down with pneumonia, after which she went to live near Reeve in a small home built on Reeve's Passumpsic, Vermont, farm, where Anne died in 2001 at 94, following another stroke. Reeve Lindbergh's book, No More Words, tells the story of her mother's last years.

Honors and awards
Anne received numerous honors and awards throughout her life in recognition of her contributions to both literature and aviation. In 1933, she received the U.S. Flag Association Cross of Honor for having taken part in surveying transatlantic air routes. The following year, she was awarded the Hubbard Medal by the National Geographic Society for having completed 40000 mi of exploratory flying with her husband, Charles Lindbergh, a feat that took them to five continents. In 1993, Women in Aerospace presented her with an Aerospace Explorer Award in recognition of her achievements in and contributions to the aerospace field.

She was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame (1979), the National Women's Hall of Fame (1996), the Aviation Hall of Fame of New Jersey, and the International Women in Aviation Pioneer Hall of Fame (1999).

Her first book, North to the Orient (1935) won one of the inaugural National Book Awards: the Most Distinguished General Nonfiction of 1935, voted by the American Booksellers Association.

Her second book, Listen! The Wind (1938), won the same award in its fourth year after the Nonfiction category had subsumed Biography. She received the Christopher Award for War Within and Without, the last installment of her published diaries.

In addition to being the recipient of honorary master's and doctor of letters degrees from her alma mater Smith College (1935 and 1970), Anne received honorary degrees from Amherst College (1939), the University of Rochester (1939), Middlebury College (1976), and Gustavus Adolphus College (1985).

Works

 * North to the Orient; Orlando, Fla, 1935; Mariner Books, 1996, ISBN 978-0-15-667140-8.
 * Listen! The Wind; New York, NY, 1938; Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1990.
 * The Wave of the Future: A Confession of Faith; New York, NY, 1940; Harcourt, Brace and Company.
 * The Steep Ascent; New York, NY, 1944: Dell, 1956.
 * Gift from the Sea. New York, NY, 1955; Pantheon, 1991, ISBN 978-0-679-73241-9.
 * The Unicorn and Other Poems 1935–1955; New York, NY, 1956; Pantheon, 1993, ISBN 978-0-679-42540-3.
 * Dearly Beloved Chicago, Ill, 1962; Chicago Review Press, 2003, ISBN 978-1-55652-490-5.
 * Earth Shine; New York, NY, 1969; Harcourt, Brace and Company.
 * Bring Me a Unicorn: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1922–1928; Orlando, Fla, 1971: Mariner Books, 1973, ISBN 978-0-15-614164-2.
 * Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead: Diaries And Letters Of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1929–1932. Orlando, Fla, 1973; Mariner Books, 1993, ISBN 978-0-15-642183-6.
 * Locked Rooms and Open Doors: Diaries And Letters Of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1933–1935. Orlando, Fla, 1974; Mariner Books, 1993, ISBN 978-0-15-652956-3.
 * The Flower and the Nettle: Diaries And Letters Of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1936–1939. Orlando, Fla, 1976: Mariner Books, 1994, First edition 1976. ISBN 978-0-15-631942-3.
 * War Within and Without: Diaries And Letters Of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1939–1944. Orlando, Fla, 1980; Mariner Books, 1995, ISBN 978-0-15-694703-9.
 * Against Wind and Tide: Letters and Journals, 1947–1986. New York, NY, 2012; Pantheon/Random House.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Anne Morrow Lindbergh


text:
Bill Mauldin

William Henry Mauldin (October 29, 1921 – January 22, 2003) was an American editorial cartoonist who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work. He was most famous for his World War II cartoons depicting American soldiers, as represented by the archetypal characters Willie and Joe, two weary and bedraggled infantry troopers who stoically endure the difficulties and dangers of duty in the field. His cartoons were popular with soldiers throughout Europe, and with civilians in the United States as well. However, his second Pulitzer Prize was for a cartoon published in 1958, and possibly his best-known cartoon was after the Kennedy assassination.

Early life
Mauldin was born in Mountain Park, New Mexico, into a family with a tradition of military service. His father, Sidney Albert Mauldin (né Bissell, but adopted after being orphaned) served as an artilleryman in World War I. Bill's grandfather by way of his father's adoption, for whom Bill was named, had been a civilian scout in the Apache Wars. After his parents' divorce, Bill and his older brother Sidney moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1937 and attended Phoenix Union High School. It was there that he began his career in editorial journalismwriting for PUHS's Coyote Journal. Bill did not graduate with his class (he was later granted a diploma in 1945) and in 1939 he took courses at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts where he studied political cartooning with Vaughn Shoemaker. While in Chicago, Mauldin met Will Lang Jr. and became fast friends with him. Lang Jr. later became a journalist and a bureau head for Life magazine.

World War II
Shortly after returning to Phoenix in 1940, Mauldin enlisted in Company D, 120th Quartermaster Regiment, of the Arizona National Guard, at Phoenix, Arizona. His division, the 45th Infantry Division, was federalized just two days later. While in the 45th, Mauldin volunteered to work for the unit's newspaper, drawing cartoons about regular soldiers or "dogfaces". Eventually he created two cartoon infantrymen, Willie and Joe, who represented the average American GI.

During July 1943, Mauldin's cartoon work continued when, as a sergeant of the 45th Infantry Division's press corps, he landed with the division in the invasion of Sicily and later in the Italian campaign. Mauldin began working for Stars and Stripes, the American soldiers' newspaper; as well as the 45th Division News, until he was officially transferred to the Stars and Stripes in February 1944. Egbert White, editor of the Stars and Stripes, encouraged Mauldin to syndicate his cartoons and helped him find an agent. By March 1944, he was given his own jeep, in which he roamed the front, collecting material. He published six cartoons a week. His cartoons were viewed by soldiers throughout Europe during World War II, and were also published in the United States. The War Office supported their syndication, not only because they helped publicize the ground forces but also to show the grim side of war, which helped show that victory would not be easy. While in Europe, Mauldin befriended a fellow soldier-cartoonist, Gregor Duncan, and was assigned to escort him for a time. (Duncan was killed at Anzio in May 1944.)

Mauldin was not without his detractors. His images—which often parodied the Army's spit-shine and obedience-to-orders-without-question policy—offended some officers. After a Mauldin cartoon ridiculed Third Army commander General George Patton's decree that all soldiers be clean-shaven at all times—even in combat—Patton called Mauldin an "unpatriotic anarchist" and threatened to "throw [his] ass in jail" and ban Stars and Stripes from his command. General Dwight Eisenhower, Patton's superior, told Patton to leave Mauldin alone; he felt the cartoons gave the soldiers an outlet for their frustrations. "Stars and Stripes is the soldiers' paper," he told him, "and we won't interfere."

In a 1989 interview, Mauldin said, "I always admired Patton. Oh, sure, the stupid bastard was crazy. He was insane. He thought he was living in the Dark Ages. Soldiers were peasants to him. I didn't like that attitude, but I certainly respected his theories and the techniques he used to get his men out of their foxholes."

Mauldin's cartoons made him a hero to the common soldier. GIs often credited him with helping them to get through the rigors of the war. His credibility with the troops increased in September 1943, when he was wounded in the shoulder by a German mortar while visiting a machine gun crew near Monte Cassino. By the end of the war, he received the Legion of Merit for his cartoons. Mauldin wanted Willie and Joe to be killed on the last day of combat, but Stars and Stripes dissuaded him.

Postwar activities
In 1945, at the age of 23, Mauldin won a Pulitzer Prize for his wartime body of work, exemplified by a cartoon depicting exhausted infantrymen slogging through the rain, its caption mocking a typical late-war headline: "Fresh, spirited American troops, flushed with victory, are bringing in thousands of hungry, ragged, battle-weary prisoners". The first civilian compilation of his work, Up Front, a collection of his cartoons interwoven with his observations of war, topped the best-seller list in 1945. After the war's end, the character of Willie was featured on the cover of Time magazine for the June 18, 1945, issue. Mauldin made the cover of the July 21, 1961, issue.

After the war, Mauldin turned to drawing political cartoons expressing a generally civil libertarian view associated with groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union. These were not well received by newspaper editors, who were hoping for apolitical cartoons. Mauldin's attempt to carry Willie and Joe into civilian life was also unsuccessful, as documented in his memoir Back Home in 1947. In 1951, he appeared with Audie Murphy in the John Huston film The Red Badge of Courage, and in Fred Zinnemann's Teresa.

In 1956, he ran unsuccessfully for the United States Congress as a Democrat in New York's 28th congressional district. Mauldin said about his run for Congress: "I jumped in with both feet and campaigned for seven or eight months. I found myself stumping around up in these rural districts and my own background did hurt there. A farmer knows a farmer when he sees one. So when I was talking about their problems I was a very sincere candidate, but when they would ask me questions that had to do with foreign policy or national policy, obviously I was pretty far to the left of the mainstream up there. Again, I'm an old Truman Democrat, I'm not that far left, but by their lives I was pretty far left."

In 1959, Mauldin won a second Pulitzer Prize, while working at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for a cartoon depicting Soviet author Boris Pasternak in a Gulag, asking another prisoner, "I won the Nobel Prize for literature. What was your crime?" Pasternak had won the Nobel Prize for his novel Doctor Zhivago, but was not allowed to travel to Sweden to accept it. The following year Mauldin won the National Cartoonist Society Award for Editorial Cartooning. In 1961, he received their Reuben Award as well.

In addition to cartooning, Mauldin worked as a freelance writer. He also illustrated many articles for Life magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Sports Illustrated, and other publications. He brought back Joe as a war correspondent, writing letters to the stateside Willie. He made cartoons of Willie and Joe together only in tributes to the "soldiers' generals": Omar Bradley and George C. Marshall, after their deaths; for a Life article on the "New Army"; and as a salute to the late cartoonist Milton Caniff.

In 1962, Mauldin moved to the Chicago Sun-Times. One of his most famous post-war cartoons was published in 1963, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It depicted the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial, with his head in his hands.

On 7 February 1965, while visiting his son who was serving with the U.S. Army at Camp Holloway, South Vietnam Mauldin was present for the Vietcong Attack on Camp Holloway.

In 1969, Mauldin was commissioned by the National Safety Council to illustrate its annual booklet on traffic safety. These pamphlets were regularly issued without copyright, but for this issue the council noted that Mauldin's cartoons were under copyright, although the rest of the pamphlet was not.

In 1985, Mauldin won the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism. Mauldin remained with the Sun-Times until his retirement in 1991.

He was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame on May 19, 1991. On September 19, 2001, Sergeant Major of the Army Jack L. Tilley presented Mauldin with a personal letter from Army Chief of Staff General Eric K. Shinseki, and a hardbound book with notes from other senior Army leaders and several celebrities, including TV broadcasters Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw, and actor Tom Hanks. Tilley also promoted Mauldin to the honorary rank of first sergeant.

Death and legacy
Mauldin died on January 22, 2003, from Alzheimer's disease and complications of injuries received in an accidental bathtub scalding. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery on January 29, 2003. Married three times, he was survived by seven children. (His daughter Kaja had died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2001.)

On March 31, 2010, the United States Post Office released a first-class denomination ($0.44) postage stamp in Mauldin's honor depicting him with Willie & Joe. In June, 2000 Mauldin was inducted into the Oklahoma Military Hall of Fame.

In 2005, Mauldin was inducted into the Oklahoma Cartoonists Hall of Fame in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, by Michael Vance. The Oklahoma Cartoonists Collection, created by Vance, is located in the Toy and Action Figure Museum.

Museum holdings
The 45th Infantry Division Museum, located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, includes a substantial collection of cartoons by Mauldin.

The Pritzker Military Museum & Library includes a substantial collection of cartoons by Mauldin.

Peanuts
From 1969 to 1998, cartoonist Charles M. Schulz (a veteran of World War II) regularly paid tribute to Bill Mauldin in his Peanuts comic strip on Veterans Day. In the strips, Snoopy, dressed as an army vet, would annually go to Mauldin's house to "quaff a few root beers and tell war stories." By the end of the strip, Schulz had depicted 17 of Snoopy's visits. Schulz went so far as to include Willie and Joe in a 1998 strip, using a picture of the characters that had been copied out of a 1944 Mauldin panel. Peanuts also paid tribute to Rosie the Riveter in 1976, and Ernie Pyle in 1997 and 1999.

Filmography
The films Up Front (1951) and Back at the Front (1952) were based on Mauldin's Willie and Joe characters; however, when Mauldin's suggestions were ignored in favor of making a slapstick comedy, he returned his advising fee; he said he had never seen the result.

Mauldin also appeared as an actor in the 1951 films The Red Badge of Courage and Teresa, and as himself in the 1998 documentary America in the '40s. He also appeared in on-screen interviews in the Thames documentary The World at War.

title: Bill Mauldin


text:
Mephistopheles

Mephistopheles, also known as Mephisto, is a demon featured in German folklore. He originally appeared in literature as the demon in the Faust legend and has since become a stock character appearing in other works of arts and popular culture.

Etymology and name meaning
The name Mephistopheles is a corrupted Greek compound. The Greek particle of negation (μή, mē) and the Greek word for "love" or "loving" (φίλος, philos) are the first and last terms of the compound, but the middle term is more doubtful. Three possible meanings have been proposed, and three different etymologies have been offered:
 * "not loving light" (φῶς, phōs; the old form of the name being Mephostopheles)
 * "not loving Faust"
 * mephitic, pertaining to poisonous vapors arising from pools, caverns, and springs.

It is likely that the name was invented for the historical alchemist Johann Georg Faust by the anonymous author of the first Faustbuch (published 1587).

In the Faust legend

Mephistopheles is associated with the Faust legend of an ambitious scholar, based on the historical Johann Georg Faust. In the legend, Faust makes a deal with the devil at the price of his soul, Mephistopheles acting as the devil's agent.

The name appears in the late-sixteenth-century Faust chapbooks – stories concerning the life of Johann Georg Faust, written by an anonymous German author.

In the 1725 version, which Goethe read, Mephostophiles is a devil in the form of a greyfriar summoned by Faust in a wood outside Wittenberg.

From the chapbooks, the name entered Faustian literature. Many authors have used it, from Goethe to Christopher Marlowe. In the 1616 edition of Marlowe's The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, Mephostophiles became Mephistophilis.

Mephistopheles in later treatments of the Faust material frequently figures as a title character: in Meyer Lutz's Mephistopheles, or Faust and Marguerite (1855), Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele (1868), Klaus Mann's Mephisto, and Franz Liszt's Mephisto Waltzes. There are also many parallels with the character of Mephistopheles and the character Lord Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

Interpretations

Although Mephistopheles appears to Faustus as a demon – a worker for Lucifer – critics claim that he does not search for men to corrupt, but comes to serve and ultimately collect the souls of those who are already damned. Farnham explains, "Nor does Mephistophiles first appear to Faustus as a devil who walks up and down on earth to tempt and corrupt any man encountered. He appears because he senses in Faustus' magical summons that Faustus is already corrupt, that indeed he is already 'in danger to be damned'."

Mephistopheles is already trapped in his own Hell by serving the Devil. He warns Faustus of the choice he is making by "selling his soul" to the devil: "Mephistophilis, an agent of Lucifer, appears and at first advises Faust not to forego the promise of heaven to pursue his goals". Farnham adds to his theory, "...[Faustus] enters an ever-present private hell like that of Mephistophiles".

Outside the Faust legend
William Shakespeare mentions "Mephistophilus" in The Merry Wives of Windsor (Act I, Scene I, line 128), and by the 17th century the name became independent of the Faust legend.

title: Mephistopheles


text:
Talk:Associative array

appending
Someone should describe how to insert elements into a hash table. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.141.127.226  (talk) 22:39, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Naming discussion (assoc array vs. dict vs. hash etc)
So far as I can tell, Wikipedia has decided/ordained that the canonical name for the abstract data type dictionary/map/associative array is "associative array". In my opinion, this decision should be revisited. Has this been discussed before, and if so, can someone point me to it?

In any case, here's the list of pros and cons I see for the current term:

pros:

 * Unambiguous. There are no other meanings for "associative array", so it doesn't need to be clarified when mentioned in other articles.

cons:

 * The only language/community that uses the term "associative array" is the PHP community.
 * Each of the terms "dictionary" and "map" are used far more widely than "associative array", both in the software engineering and computer science fields.
 * The term is misleading in that arrays are a completely different kind of data structure. Novices tend to gloss over this distinction because in PHP and Javascript you can use arrays with arbitrary keys, so they are really dictionaries.

I propose that we rename this article to "Map (computer science)" and redirect "Associative Array" to that.

Just to list the alternatives, right off the bat we can say that "Hashtable" is not quite right, because it implies a particular implementation of the abstract data type.

The next runner up is "Dictionary (computer science)", which I think is a very strong candidate, since it seems to see the most use in programming language standard libraries (check the list of terms used in language standard libraries in the article). However, I don't think it sees much use in the computer science field, and while I personally prefer the name "dictionary" in my own discussions, I feel like "map" more correctly refers to the abstract data type and less to the specific task of mapping string keys to values.

How do other people feel about this?

Rkleckner (talk) 18:16, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

 * Wikipedia is of two minds on the topic, since the comparison article is Comparison of programming languages (mapping). For my part, I think "mapping" is an excellent term, and would support a rename to "Mapping data type" (by parallel with Array data type).—chaos5023 (talk) 18:19, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

 * "Map" is a term with too many meanings already, even in CS alone. Consider memory mapping (mmap), character map, bitmap, mipmap, key map (xkbmap), and so on. Most of those have nothing to do with the data structure. "Associative array" makes it absolutely clear we're talking about a specific data structure; while we could talk about another data structure to implement the map of something (example: an actual geographic map). Niczar ⏎ 18:57, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

 * It's very true that associative array is totally unambiguous. However, I don't think it is the most popular, especially in the field of computer science.  While it may be best for the purposes of Wikipedia to use the unambiguous term, it promotes this term, which I believe is confusing and inhibits understanding.  I'm more conflicted about it now than when I started, so I'm just going to put in my two cents and let the rest of you decide what to do.  Rkleckner (talk) 19:08, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

 * mmap maps virtual addresses onto something else, charmaps map integers to glyphs, keymaps map keys to signals. "map" is not ambiguous at all, it's a well understood frequently used term in computer science. 99.224.97.6 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:36, 23 May 2011 (UTC).

 * FWIW, though, "associative array" has seen a lot more usage than just in PHP; the term has a lot of history. In all likelihood it's the name of the article (and is used in PHP docs) because it's probably the oldest term for the concept. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:22, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

 * I think the term "association list" has a lot of history, but I don't think "associative array" has as much. I take back what I said about it being restricted to the PHP community, though.  there is more usage of the term, for example in the D programming language.  Rkleckner (talk) 19:08, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

 * I'd like to see some actual statistics correlated with popularity before making such changes. --Cyber cobra (talk) 18:49, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

 * I'm pretty happy with "associative array". It is an old, standard term.  Gafter (talk) 00:04, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The problem with "associative array" is that many dictionary implementations (for example trees) have nothing to do with arrays.
 * Dictionary is a more classic terminology that is more abstract and is used a lot in data structure books. Sabioverde (talk) 05:21, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

 * Dictionary is also used in CS in the sense "data dictionary", which is distinct from an ADT. 165.146.42.194 (talk) 11:54, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * You are incorrect saying that "Dictionary" is not very used in the computer science field.
 * Rather than looking at how languages name Dictionaries. It's best to look at Data Structures Books. Such as the classic Lewis and Denenberg (1991) which consistently refers to Dictionaries by this name (see page 175 for example).
 * Another example is the 1983 book "Data Structures and Algorithms" by Alfred Aho. For example in chapter 4.6.
 * The very much used book "Introduction to Algorithms" by Thomas Cormen, et al. used in Universities such as MIT (see OpenCourseware for example). Uses the term "dictionary" as well. For example in the third edition of this book on page 229 at the beginning of Part 3.
 * So "dictionary" is widely used in DATA STRUCTURES and Algorithm books to explain the concept of dictionary operations. Even in very widely used books such a Cormen, et al as late as 2009.
 * I'm not sure why the Wikipedia discussions focus on what languages like PHP, Python, or Java call it, because it's largely irrelevant. We're talking about Data Structures and Abstract Data Types.
 * And Dictionary is the proper name for this Abstract Data Type which is implemented with Data Structures such as linked lists (see Denenberg), trees of various sorts, hash tables, skip lists and many other data structures. Sabioverde (talk) 03:43, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Consider renaming this article to "Map (abstract data type)"
-- Piotr Jurkiewicz (talk) 17:15, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
 * This will be consistent and symmetric with the naming of other composite ADT articles:
 * Container (abstract data type)
 * Set (abstract data type)
 * List (abstract data type)
 * Graph (abstract data type)
 * see more here: Abstract_data_type
 * 'map' is more popular term than 'associative array', both in computer science and software engineering:
 * the most popular languages (C++, Java, JavaScript) use this term
 * many less popular languages use this term as well (Go, Scala, Haskell, Clojure)
 * 'dictionary' (C#, Python, Tcl) or 'hash' (Perl, Ruby) terms are also used
 * 'associative array' is the least popular term (PHP)
 * Even this article links to multimap and bidirectional map saying that they 'generalize an associative array'. It would be much more proper and natural to say that multimap generalizes map, rather than associative array.
 * I did some academic literature search to find usages since 2018 of "associative array", "dictionary", "map" in combination with "data structure":
 * (map) uses "map data structure" to refer to both dictionary and list types. It's only a BS thesis, not very reliable.
 * Similarly cites geekforgeeks as reference for map, also a bad article.

 * The search results for "map" were the most polluted, overlapping with map in the geography sense.
 * , giving a completely new definition for associative array as row x column -> value. It seems Kepler has redefined the term in database theory.
 * gives the traditional definition for "associative array". And their usage is a key-value .dat file. OK. But they cite Kademlia for prior work. WTF, a DHT has completely distinct usages from a key-value CSV. Unreliable source.
 * uses all three terms in one sentence in the intro (mentioning that Python uses 'dictionary'), but settles on the term "2D associative arrays" for storing the values of . AFAICT this isn't a normative use of the term, but it actually agrees with Kepler's usage.
 * shows that new (academic) languages are copying Python's use of 'dictionary'
 * A handbook on data structures, originally published in 2004, using 'dictionary'. It's a bit suspicious that many of the authors have Indian names, but given the number of citations it seems quite reliable.
 * . A new data structure, for "dynamic dictionaries for multisets". The paper is a bit dense but it seems the operations are close to the standard definition.
 * , apparently some people use the term "dictionary" in machines learning to mean matrix. But this is excluded by searching for "data structure" with quotes.
 * another dictionary data structure reference
 * Similarly the dictionary of data structures uses 'dictionary'.
 * tl;dr is that academic usage has settled on 'dictionary' and the other terms mean other things now. So now reviewing WP:CRITERIA:

 * The consistency could be solved by renaming to XX (abstract data type). But this is long, and abstract is redundant. IMO all the pages should be renamed to XX (data type). So my vote is for Dictionary (data type). --Mathnerd314159 (talk) 23:24, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The use of "Dictionary" LONG predates the Python language. For example in Lewis and Denenberg's book "Data Structures and their algorithms" on page 175 the title of Chapter 6.1 is "SETS AND DICTIONARIES AS ABSTRACT DATA TYPES". This book is from 1991 and was used in major Universities in the United States in the 90s.
 * It defines the "Dictionary" as an ADT by defining the set of operations it has to implement. I quote their definition here:
 * "A set abstract data type with just the operations MakeEmptySet, IsEmptySet, Insert, Delete, and LookUp is called a dictionary. We begin by examining implementations of the dictionary abstract data type, noting occasionally when the implementation permits efficient implementation of other set operations. In Chapter 9 we return to the question of representations specifically designed to
 * support other set operations. "
 * The current article makes the following mistakes:
 * - Using "Associative Array" when Dictionaries are not necessarily arrays at all. They can be trees, hash tables, arrays, lists, or whatever implementation we want to give it. For example Lewis and Denenberg suggest using Linked Lists as an implementation of Dictionaries (and Sets as well), by simply moving the last used item to the front.
 * - Confusing ADTs with Data Structures. ADTs define the set of operations and is a terminology traditionally used back in the Pascal era when we defined new Data Types that weren't supported directly by the language. Data Structures are the implementation of ADTs. So a Dictionary isn't a data structure.
 * We should refer to the proper terminology used in Data Structures books. We also have a precedent with languages such as Smalltalk 80 which referred to the Abstract Type as a Dictionary. (see "Smalltalk-80 the Language and its implementation" published in 1983 by Goldberg and Robson https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/273 for example on page 67) Sabioverde (talk) 03:08, 10 September 2022 (UTC)
 * The reason "abstract" is added is because of a longstanding explanation of classes of data structures that implement certain operations. One could say that all implementations of the Dictionary ADT are the same "data type" but that would be implementation dependent as well. Data types are specifically defined types in languages. Abstract Data Types are more abstract notions. Refer to Lewis and Denenberg (cited above) or your classic Pascal book for an explanation on the distinction. We should not deviate from long standing definitions.
 * Here's another use of "dictionary" in a course catalog from the University of Washington: https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse326/ Sabioverde (talk) 03:18, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 26 January 2022

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: (non-admin closure) NO CONSENSUS User:力 (powera, π,  ν ) 23:46, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

There is quite a bit of discussion here, but nothing resembling consensus for any particular move -- and the discussion is too broad for a re-list to solve this. This should be discussed on a WikiProject before there is a re-nomination, but no prejudice against a re-nomination in March. User:力 (powera, π,  ν ) 23:46, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

– See my reasoning above for renaming associative array to dictionary. As for the rest, I think that leaving out "abstract" is more WP:CONCISE. Also, the word "abstract" adds confusion when the concrete data structure / syntax in many languages is also called list, set, etc. and this concrete implementation is discussed in the article, e.g. the list in Set_(abstract_data_type) Mathnerd314159 (talk) 23:59, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Associative array → Dictionary (data type)
 * Collection (abstract data type) → Collection (data type)
 * Container (abstract data type) → Container (data type)
 * List (abstract data type) → List (data type)
 * Set (abstract data type) → Set (data type)
 * Graph (abstract data type) → Graph (data type)
 * Tree (data structure) → Tree (data type)
 * Stack (abstract data type) → Stack (data type)
 * Queue (abstract data type) → Queue (data type)

Discussion
I tend to support this but it may not work well for stacks... I suggest we pursue global RFC for this. I also would like to refer you to Abstract data type article to get sense of rationale behind titles. Courtesy pinging. He had pretty good summary on differences here: Talk:Data type. AXO NOV (talk) ⚑ 09:27, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Stack (data type) is just a redirect to Stack (abstract data type), it should be fine to use the shorter name. That redirect was actually one of the reasons I proposed the move. As far as ADT vs data type, Data type defines ADTs as a subset of data types, so the move seems correct from a hierarchy perspective. As far as "global RFC", what do you mean? It is already listed at Requested_moves, this seems to be the maximum level of visibility Wikipedia has for proposed moves. --Mathnerd314159 (talk) 19:21, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * See WP:RFC. AXO NOV  (talk) ⚑ 08:28, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

 * Agree The "abstract" in "abstract data type" doesn't add anything, and thus is unnecessary. I'm agnostic about "associative array" vs. "dictionary". --Macrakis (talk) 22:10, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Disagree. It gives a abstract description of the data type ideas regardless of the language in use. AXO NOV  (talk) ⚑ 16:43, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Tree data structure versus Tree data type
I disagree with the rename of Tree (data structure) to Tree (data type). The terms "tree data structure" and "tree data type" denote different notions. The difference is described in Tree_(data_structure) and Rose_tree. The latter page states the following relationship between the terms:
 * A tree data type is a set of values of tree data structures.

Moreover, the page also provides a diagrammatization of the difference between a "tree data structure" and a "tree data value".Hundblue (talk) 17:14, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Dictionary: data structure / data type / abstract data type
I think the 3 terms denote distinct notions.  A single dictionary (data structure), or just a dictionary, is a representation of a finite map posessing its own identity. Two distinct dictionaries can represent the same finite map - in that case, the dictionaries have the same value (namely the finite map). A single dictionary (data type) is a set of dictionaries (or something that represents such a set) which are then called instances of that type. A single dictionary (abstract data type) is a set of dictionary values. In context of functional programming where there are only values (i.e. two distinct entities cannot have the same value), the "abstract" adjective is redundant.

Consider the JavaScript / Ruby / Python code shown in the box on the right in which dictionaries  and   are created. (The respective terminology for "dictionary" is "object" / "hash" / "dict".) The following is satisfied:    and   are not the same, since applying   will affect only  .    and   have the same value. In Ruby and Python, this can be verified by the value comparison operator  (i.e., in these two languages,   evaluates to   or  ).

The dictionaries  and   are not data types - instead, they are instances of a single built-in dictionary type (named respectively   /   /   – "the dictionary").

Conclusion: Instead of the rename Associative array → Dictionary (data type) (which I disagree with) I suggest Dictionary (data structure). --Hundblue (talk) 22:31, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
 * You are failing to distinguish a data type (the API: what you do with it) from a data structure (how you implement it and how fast that implementation runs). This article is mostly about the data type. There is no single dictionary data structure; there are many structures with different names that implement that data type, some of which are listed in the "implementation" section of this article. So your suggestion of Dictionary (data structure) is one that I think is incorrect and should not be used, because it incorrectly suggests that there is a single data structure described by this article, when really it is the data type that is described here. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:39, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

I find it questionable whether the article (in the current state) is mostly about the (API-defined) data type. There is a #Properties subsection that provides an adaptation of the "Formal Definition" from. (Interestingly, the page is subtitled "(data structure)".) The definition does not state explicitly if multiple empty dictionaries are possible, but since there is a magical $new$ operation which "creates a new empty dictionary" one can perhaps infer that there are (infinitely?) many empty dictionaries. Assuming that, there is a problem with the equality sign (=) in the definition. Is $new = new$ satisfied (as suggested by the $remove(k, new) = new$ condition)? Is $insert(k, v, D)$ the same dictionary as $insert(k, v, remove(k, D))$?

In my opinion, a more rigorous alternative to the above can be obtained by the following definition:

 * A dictionary is a structure $(X, K, V, x, R)$ where $X$ is a set of nodes, $K$ is a set of keys, $V$ is a set of values, $x$ is a distinguished node and $R$ is a relation between keys and values (a subset of $K × V$) that is finite and functional.

Alternatively, one can first define a dictionary context $𝒞 = (X, K, V)$ and then define a $𝒞$-dictionary to be a pair $(x, R)$ with the same constraints as above. The set (denote it $𝒟$) of all $𝒞$-dictionaries makes up for a "dictionary type". This set $𝒟$ is not itself a dictionary. One can define "API" operations:   $remove : K × 𝒟 →  𝒟$ by $remove(k, (x, R)) = (x, R ∖ {k} × V)$,  $insert : K × V × 𝒟 →  𝒟$ by $insert(k, v, (x, R)) = (x, (R ∖ {k} × V) ∪ {(k, v)}))$, <li> $lookup : K × 𝒟 ↷  V$ by $lookup(k, (x, R)) = v$ iff $(k, v) ∈ R$. <li> </ul> The operations $remove$ and $insert$ preserve "identity" (only the map is changed, not the node) like corresponding operations in JavaScript / Ruby / Python.

Note that there is a distinction between a dictionary (an element of $𝒟$) and a node (an element of $X$). That is, in the JavaScript / Ruby / Python code ,   is not a dictionary but a node. After the insert operation, the   node is the same like before the operation. What has been changed is the associated map (the $R$-component). That is, in JavaScript / Ruby / Python, there is a global association of nodes to finite maps. Such association can be expressed as a set $𝒜$ of source-name-target triples, see Nested dictionary.

The above text should document that at least in the JavaScript / Ruby / Python environments, there is a single common abstraction of the dictionary concept. In this abstraction, a dictionary is a mathematical structure, just like e.g. lattice in order theory. Thus, there is a reason to combine the words "dictionary" and "structure". The additional term "data" might be used for disambiguation. But I understand that the whole term "dictionary data structure" might already have established another meaning(s) - that of "implementation" structures of the dictionary concept. For this reason, I suggest to keep the current page name Associative array - which is neutral w.r.t. data-structure vs. data-type issues.

I disagree with the rename Dictionary (data type) since it incorrectly suggests that the page provides a valid definition of the term "dictionary data type". It presently does not. --Hundblue (talk) 13:31, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The things you are talking about are basically instances of the specific data type. I also would like to see comparison of popularity between Dictionary and Associative arrays in actual sources. I don't think that dictionary usage is prevailing. I also have to agree with 's opinion above. AXO NOV  (talk) ⚑ 16:42, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

As for the notion of an instance, the "things" I am talking about are (direct) instances of  /   /   in JavaSript / Ruby / Python, respectively. (There are even introspection methods or operators / /  that support the term "instance".) These instances are accordingly termed objects / hashes / dictionaries. Let us use the Python term uniformly a call these objects dictionaries. As already has been demonstrated above, there is a common syntax and common characteristics of dictionaries in JavaScript/Ruby/Python. In particular: <ol> <li style="list-style-type:'(1) '">There can be more than one empty dictionary. In the code, both   and   are empty dictionaries, but   is  not the same  dictionary as. <li style="list-style-type:'(2) '">There can be dictionaries with circularities, including cases similar to Quine atoms. For example,  is allowed. After executing this code,  is still a dictionary – it does not cease to be an instance of  / /. </ol> Now the problem with the "dictionary data type" term is that the page (named Associative array at present) does not provide a definition (or description) of such a data type (especially when viewed as a set of "instances") so that dictionaries from JavaScript/Ruby/Python would be  compliant with such a definition . That is, there is no valid definition of "dictionary data type" such that dictionaries from these 3 languages would appear to be instances of that data type, in particular w.r.t. (1) and (2). --Hundblue (talk) 23:08, 5 February 2022 (UTC) <div style="padding-left: 1.6em; font-style: italic; border-top: 1px solid #a2a9b1; margin: 0.5em 0; padding-top: 0.5em">The discussion above is closed. <b style="color: #FF0000;">Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Renaming discussion on WikiProject Computer science
(From above) This should be discussed on a WikiProject before there is a re-nomination: I started a talk page for renaming this page on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer science

KenyonP (talk) 06:53, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Associative array


text:
The White Plague

The White Plague is a 1982 science fiction novel by American author Frank Herbert about an engineered disease which kills only women. It was nominated for a best science fiction novel Locus Award in 1983.

Plot
On May 20, 1996, an IRA terrorist car bomb explodes, killing the wife and children of molecular biologist John Roe O'Neill. Driven halfway insane by his loss, his mind fragments into several personalities that carry out his plan for him. O'Neill plans a gendercidal revenge and creates a plague that kills only women, but for which men are the carriers. O'Neill then releases it in Ireland (for supporting the IRA), England (for their actions in Ireland and giving the IRA a cause), and Libya (for training said terrorists); he demands that the governments of the world send all citizens of those countries back to their countries, and that they quarantine those countries and let the plague run its course, so they will lose what he has lost; if they do not, he has more plagues to release.

After releasing the plague, O'Neill goes to Ireland to hide, planning to offer his services as a molecular biologist in the hopes of sabotaging whatever work is done there on finding a cure. When he arrives in Ireland, he is suspected of being O'Neill (whom the investigatory agencies of the world have deduced is responsible). To travel to the lab at Killaloe, he is forced to walk with a priest, a boy who has taken a vow of silence due to the death of his mother, and Joseph Herity, the IRA bomber who detonated the explosive that killed O'Neill's wife and children; their purpose is to confirm his identity, either through Herity's indirect questioning, or the possibility that he will confess to the priest when confronted with the pain his revenge has caused for the boy.

Meanwhile, law and order have broken down in England and Ireland, and the old Irish ways are coming back. Local IRA thugs appoint themselves "kings of old", and others recreate ancient Celtic religions centered on the rowan tree. The IRA has effective control of Ireland, but as the governments of the world grow certain that O'Neill is there and essentially in custody, they consider wiping out the three targeted countries to end the lingering threat.

Reception
Dave Langford reviewed The White Plague for White Dwarf #41, and stated that "There's plenty of edge-of-the-seat suspense and good thumping melodrama in the race to crack the gene-structure of the plague while a few women are still left alive."

The White Plague was nominated for a Locus Award for best science fiction novel in 1983, but lost to Isaac Asimov's novel Foundation's Edge.

title: The White Plague