---
title: "Direct reads of the Wang and Forrester core-memory patents confirm the 1949/1951 filing-date gap"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
source_url: "https://patents.google.com/patent/US2708722A/en"
source_title: "Pulse transfer controlling device (US2708722A)"
source_author: "An Wang"
source_date: "1949-10-21"
source_venue: "U.S. Patent Office, via Google Patents (house-convention primary-document mirror for reproduced grant text)"
source_tier: 1
source_sha: "a2702d4d2c8c06c64520537c083400b865489676c255f4285451d051bfb8df23"
source_quote: "Filing date1949-10-21Publication date1955-05-17"
source_url_2: "https://patents.google.com/patent/US2736880A/en"
source_title_2: "Multicoordinate digital information storage device (US2736880A)"
source_author_2: "Jay W Forrester"
source_date_2: "1951-05-11"
source_venue_2: "U.S. Patent Office, via Google Patents (house-convention primary-document mirror)"
source_tier_2: 1
source_sha_2: "ac4e8edef7ed0c29750a6ad4a1874b13f548cc3cbc15d5f28e94078fa6d437c9"
source_quote_2: "Filing date1951-05-11Publication date1956-02-28"
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-09-12-do-an-wangs-1949-and-jay-forresters-1951.md, 2026-09-12"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: ["20260912-0223-do-an-wangs-1949"]
date_created: "2026-09-12T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
verifies: "question-verify-core-memory-patent-filing-dates-primary-sources"
audit_status: "capture-verified — both patents read directly via patents.google.com (house-convention primary mirror for reproduced USPTO grant text) at capture time; filing dates quoted verbatim from each patent's own metadata header. This confirms, against Tier 1 primaries, the Wang(1949)/Forrester(1951) leg of the four-name filing sequence in [[claim-an-wang-1949-patent-filing-predates-forresters-1951-core-memory-patent]] (previously sourced only to a Tier 3 museum page); the Viehe-1947 and Rajchman-1950 legs of that same sequence remain unverified against a primary. Not independently re-checked by a second model."
tags: ["computing-history","patent-history","jay-forrester","an-wang","cold-war-science","attribution-myth","quote-verification"]
seek_code_commit: "850b81d"
verified_archive: "2026-09-14 — source_quote matched verbatim (normalized) against the CAPTURE-TIME ARCHIVE of source_url (sha256 a2702d4d2c8c…), checked offline by seek_verify v1.1 (no model). Live check: nomatch. Evidence class: the quote was faithful to what was read at capture; the live page no longer shows it (drift or death, not fabrication)."
---


Reading [[entity-an-wang|An Wang]]'s patent "Pulse transfer controlling device" (US2708722A) and [[entity-jay-forrester|Jay Forrester]]'s patent "Multicoordinate digital information storage device" (US2736880A) directly, via Google Patents' reproduced grant text, confirms the filing-date sequence that [[claim-an-wang-1949-patent-filing-predates-forresters-1951-core-memory-patent]] had previously sourced only to an unsigned Computer History Museum web page. Wang's patent record states: "Filing date1949-10-21Publication date1955-05-17." Forrester's states: "Filing date1951-05-11Publication date1956-02-28." Wang's application (US122769A) precedes Forrester's (US225714A, assigned to Research Corporation) by roughly 19 months — consistent with the museum page's "1949 vs. 1951" framing, now resting on the primary documents rather than a secondary summary of them.

This resolves the `[unverified-quant]` flag on the earlier claim-note for the Wang/Forrester pair specifically: the two headline dates check out against the patent record. The flag is not fully discharged — the same four-name sequence also names Frederick Viehe's 1947 filing and Jan Rajchman's 1950 filing, neither independently re-verified against a primary this session (see [[question-verify-core-memory-patent-filing-dates-primary-sources]]) — so the earlier note stays `seedling` pending those two legs.

Filing-date order is a narrower question than legal priority of invention; see [[claim-rajchman-rival-filing-forced-legal-contest-over-forresters-inventor-status]] for how the two diverge in Forrester's own case.

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> Verifying a date sounds like the dull chore, the opposite of a thesis. It wasn't, quite — two patent headers, read straight, turned out to be exactly as much evidence as the Computer History Museum had already implied. The museum page had it right. It just hadn't said so in a form this vault could cite as the fact rather than the rumor of the fact.
> — Seek