Evelyn Berezin, la pionera de la computación que creó el primer procesador

Compu­ting pioneer Evelyn Bere­zin died at 93 this week. She was most known as the desig­ner of the first true word-proces­sing compu­ter. But she desig­ned many other inno­va­tive compu­ting systems and helmed Redac­tron Corpo­ra­tion, a company that helped trans­form offi­ces by produ­cing and distri­bu­ting her word-proces­sor device.

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Born to Jewish immi­grants from Russia in New York City in 1925, Bere­zin earned a BA in physics at NYU before working throug­hout the 1950s and 1960s desig­ning early compu­ting systems. She had become inter­es­ted in physics after reading her brot­her’s science-fiction peri­o­di­cals.

In the earlier years of her career, she worked amidst a wave of inno­va­tion and new possi­bi­li­ties that came with the arri­val of tran­sis­tors. Among her early accom­plish­ments was an airline reser­va­ti­ons system for United Airli­nes, which «served 60 cities throug­hout the United States with a one-second response time and with no central system failu­res in 11 years of opera­tion, » accor­ding to the Compu­ter History Museum.

While IBM had been produ­cing word proces­sors of a sort for a few years when Bere­zin deve­lo­ped hers in 1968, she was the first to use semi­con­duc­tor chips to make a true compu­ting system for this purpose. IBM’s solu­tion used a typew­ri­ter and a magne­tic tape drive and was much less effi­ci­ent to use.

The first version of her word-proces­sing machine had no screen and was the size of a modern washer or dryer, though later itera­ti­ons brought displays and other impro­ve­ments to the design. And of course, it was wholly unlike the soft­ware-based solu­ti­ons for perso­nal compu­ters that we use today. The New York Times descri­bed the inven­tion in its obitu­ary for Bere­zin this way:

Its keybo­ard and prin­ter was an I.B.M. Selec­tric Typew­ri­ter with a ratt­ling print head the size of a golf ball. The device had 13 semi­con­duc­tor chips, some of which Ms. Bere­zin desig­ned, and program­ma­ble logic to drive its word-proces­sing func­ti­ons.

The device was marke­ted directly to women who were working as secre­ta­ries with an ad in the publi­ca­tion Ms., which was co-foun­ded by Gloria Stei­nem. The ad clai­med "the death of the dead-end secre­tary.” At first, the machine made secre­ta­ri­es’ lives much easier, though it ulti­ma­tely contri­bu­ted to the redu­ced promi­nence of the profes­sion in the work­place. Here is a segment of the ad copy, as quoted by The Washing­ton Post:

Unlike your compla­cent sisters of the previ­ous gene­ra­tion, you want the free­dom to get into more inter­es­ting and challen­ging work—­work that’ll give you the chance to move into a staff, admi­nis­tra­tive or mana­ge­rial posi­ti­on—w­here you can call some of the shots… With the deve­lop­ment of auto­ma­tic editing typew­ri­ters and word proces­sing systems, the condi­ti­ons of dead-end typing have been prac­ti­cally elimi­na­ted.

FURTHER READING

The complete history of the IBM PC, part one: The deal of the century

When Intel failed to meet Redac­tron’s needs for suita­ble sili­con for the machine, Bere­zin’s company desig­ned and produ­ced its own. Redac­tron sold about 10,000 of these machi­nes over the course of seven years. They sold for between $6,400 and $8,000 each—an even more enor­mous sum at that time than it is today. Redac­tron compe­ted directly with IBM and was ulti­ma­tely acqui­red by the Burroughs Corpo­ra­tion. Bere­zin spent the later years of her career as a venture capi­ta­list.

She was induc­ted into the Long Island Tech­no­logy Hall of Fame in 2006 and the Women in Tech­no­logy Hall of Fame in Los Ange­les in 2011, but she does not have the house­hold name recog­ni­tion that some other simi­larly produc­tive figu­res in the history of compu­ting have had.

Bere­zin died in New York City on Decem­ber 8. She had been diag­no­sed with lymp­homa and chose not to pursue treat­ment.