There's more to the story of the Centronics printer connector. Centronics was a subsidiary of Wang Laboratories, producer of Wang word processors and computers.

There's more to the story of the Centronics printer connector. Centronics was a subsidiary of Wang Laboratories, producer of Wang word processors and computers. They had 20,000 surplus connectors from one of their earlier calculator products, so they reused the connectors for their printers, creating a de facto standard. An Wang was one of the inventors of core memory (it's complicated). He sold his core memory patent to IBM and used the money to create Wang Laboratories, eventually becoming a billionaire.