The 300 series put Wang’s powerful logarithmic calculating electronics into a more convenient form factor and soon became a major force in technical and engineering calculation. The user interface directly exposed the dual accumulator architecture and the logarithmic calculation engine but technical users readily understood these elements and greatly valued the power of the logarithmic engine, unavailable in any other desktop calculator.
The 300 series was a family of increasingly powerful machines:
- 300 4-function arithmetic with two accumulators
- 310 300 with square root and X^2^
- 320 320 with log
eand e^x^ - 360 320 with additional storage registers
- 360KT 360 with sin, cos, arcsin, arctan
- 370 360 with punch-card stored programming
- 380 360 with magnetic tape catridge stored programming
The family could be extended with a variety of peripherals:
- Core Store
- TTY interface
Wang also produced tee-connectors which could split the cable from one electronics package connector to two (or even four) keyboards. Only one keyboard on each connector could be active at a time and this required co-operation between such users. Tee connectors could be used with SE packages to allow up to sixteen (!) keyboards on one electronics package and the possibilities for interaction and chaos among sixteen competing users can only be imagined…..
The 310E, 320E and 360E electronics packages were all available in “SE” form and the SE form was priced at about twice the E price. With four times the number of users for twice the price, plus extra keyboards, SE units offered significant saving for customers with large numbers of users. In 1968 the 360SE was listed at $3990, compared to $1995 for the 360E. See the original pricelists in the Wang Data section for further information.