LowellDeeds

Middlesex South recorded more than 1000 documents with the new ACS computer system today. In the satellite office in Lowell, several hundred of these documents were recorded and scanned without any major difficulties. Customers using the public access terminals noticed the great improvement in the retrieval time of images (almost instantaneous) compared to the agonizingly slow pace of the old Wang system. Speaking of Wang, yesterday's decommissioning of the old Cambridge system represents the end of the Wang era in Massachusetts registries of deeds. When first installed in the early 1980s, Wang computers held much promise. But the Lowell-based company made some bad business decisions and, over time, abandoned its customers while it staggered from one unsuccessful business plan to the next. Life at the registry will be better with Wang gone.