Portrait of Wah Chang

Birthday profile

Wah Chang

Wah Chang, Chinese-American artist and designer (died 2003)

Born
August 2, 1917
Died
December 22, 2003
Zodiac sign
Leo
Birth year
1917

About Wah Chang

Wah Ming Chang was an American designer, sculptor, and artist. With the encouragement of his adoptive father, James Blanding Sloan, he began exhibiting his prints and watercolors at the age of seven to highly favorable reviews. Chang worked with Sloan on several theatre productions and in the 1940s, they briefly created their own studio to produce films. He is known later in life for his sculpture and the props he designed for Star Trek: The Original Series, including the tricorder and communicator. The Chang family moved from Honolulu, Hawaii to San Francisco, California and about 1920 opened the Ho-Ho Tea Room on Sutter Street, which became a favorite venue for the city's Bohemian artists.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Wah Chang was born

Wah Chang was born in 1917. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1917

  • Best-selling book"Mr. Britling Sees It Through" – H.G. Wells

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentProfessional sports curtailed as America enters World War I
  • Top headlineUS enters World War I
  • Technology milestoneFirst practical military use of sonar
  • World population~1.77B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderWoodrow Wilson
  • U.S. population100.8M

1917 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Wah Chang's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19172026
Gas$0.25$3.45/gal
Population100.8M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.