Evelyn Berezin

Berezin was married for 51 years to Israel Wilenitz, a chemical engineer, born in 1922 in London. Wilenitz died on February 20, 2003. Berezin died on December 8, 2018, at the age of 93 while in treatment for cancer.

In 1980, Berezin served as President of Greenhouse Management Company, General Partner of a venture capital group dedicated to early stage high technology companies.

In the 1970s, although the market continued strong the economy suffered a serious inflation, increasing interest rates to a level (16%) which was untenable for a business like Redactron which operated in a world in which equipment was rented. The company was sold to the Burroughs Corporation in 1976, and integrated into its office equipment division. Berezin stayed on until 1979.

In 1968, Berezin had the idea for a word processor to simplify the work of secretaries, and in 1969 she founded Redactron Corporation, which became a public company and delivered thousands of systems to customers throughout its international marketing organization. The company's main product was called the "Data Secretary" and it was the size of a small refrigerator, had no screen, and the keyboard and printer was an IBM Selectric typewriter.

In 1960, Berezin had a job offer from the New York Stock Exchange redacted strictly because she was a woman, despite being one of few qualified for the job.

The Underwood Typewriter Company was not able to continue the development beyond 1957, and Berezin went to a company called Teleregister, formerly a division of Western Union.

Berezin began graduate work at New York University, holding a fellowship from the United States Atomic Energy Commission. In 1951 she accepted a job with the Electronic Computer Corporation and began there as head of the Logic Design Department. Berezin was the only person doing the logic design for computers being developed by ECC. In 1957 ECC was purchased by Underwood Corporation (originally known as the Underwood Typewriter Company). Here, she designed a number of computers which were very general in structure but individual in specific application. Among them was a system for the US Army for range calculations, a system for controlling the distribution of magazines, and what is now considered the first office computer.

Evelyn Berezin (April 12, 1925 – December 8, 2018) was an American computer designer of the first computer-driven word processor. She also worked on computer-controlled systems for airline reservations.

Berezin was born in the east Bronx in 1925 to Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire, and attended Christopher Columbus High School. She started university at the age of sixteen at Hunter College in January 1941, studying Economics instead of the Physics she preferred because it was preferred as a subject for women at that time. After WWII started, new opportunities made the study of physics possible with a scholarship at New York University, plus free classes at both Hunter and Brooklyn Polytech during the war years. At the same time, she worked full-time during the day as an assistant in the Rheology Department of the Research Division of the International Printing Company (IPI). Going to university at night, she received her B.S. in physics in 1946.