IBM Buys Memory, PS2 Sales Launch in Japan (PCGH-Retro 04 Mar)

…1955: Today, American An Wang, born in 1920, sold his rights to the patent on a Device for controlling pulse transmissions (“Pulse transfer controlling device”) to IBM. The international office machine manufacturer used this for ferrite core memory, which was the basis for many digital computer systems in the 1950s and 1970s and thus contributed to IBM’s success and dominance in the semiconductor industry. Wang’s own company, Wang Laboratories, which operated under the name of Wang Global in the 1990s, was sold to Getronics at the end of the 1990s after averting insolvency after an initially buoyant but then checkered course.

… 2000: Sony starts selling its Playstation 2 game console in Japan. In addition to the function as a pioneer for the spread of the DVD (the Playstation is initially one of the cheapest and best DVD players), the tricky programming of the console has become a legend. The emotion engine (main processor) and the graphics synthesizer work hand in hand to conjure up the console’s games on the screen. Due to the high theoretical computing power of the Emotion Engine at the time, the console was initially classified as a supercomputer and fell under the Export Restriction Act.