Why Is This Woman Not Famous?
Everyone I know will occasionally Google their name to see what comes up. I’m not a modest man. I haven’t done so for a while, but for the purposes of this blog I’ve just done it. I’m lucky in that I’m the only “Gwyn Headley” in the world, so every hit relates to me in some way — it’s not like googling John Smith.
And I get 29,400 results. Not enough, I grant you, but quite a few. Now google “Evelyn Berezin”.
There are 810 results.
Why is this woman not famous?
Yes, I know, you’ve never heard of her. Neither had I.
She’s a nice old Jewish lady, lives on Long Island, probably plays a mean hand of Mah-Jong.
Oh yes — and she invented the office computer.
I love women in science and technology. Ada Lovelace, Rosalind Franklin, the stunningly beautiful Hedy Lamarr, Marie Curie — these are names we all know and revere. But who has heard of Evelyn Berezin?
And we should have done. Without Ms Berezin there would be no Bill Gates, no Steve Jobs, no internet, no word processors, no spreadsheets; nothing that remotely connects business with the 21st century.
I sit and I stare at two computer screens all day, every day. I type on a computer keyboard. I cannot recall what I did before I had a computer, but I guess I spent a lot of time on the phone, with a notepad.
The reason I discovered Ms Berezin was because after Jacqui Norman rather cruelly mocked me in a recent Newsletter for having bought my first computer over 30 years ago, I rather idly googled “Redactron” to see if the manufacturer was still around.
It isn’t. The name is now owned by a Dutch orthopaedic bed manufacturer. I had to dig a little deeper. And I uncovered this amazing story.
In 1951 Evelyn Berezin graduated from New York University with a degree in physics. In graduate school she held an Atomic Energy Commission Fellowship. She invented the first office computer in 1953 while working for the Underwood Typewriter Company. Underwood was later bought by Olivetti, which never marketed her invention.
She went to Teleregister, where she developed several real-time systems, including the first computerised airline-reservation system in the world. In 1968 she got the idea of developing a “Word Processor”, which would allow secretaries and others to write, store and edit texts instead of continually retyping them.
Ms Berezin founded the Redactron Corporation in 1969 to design, develop, and manufacture electronic word processing systems. This company built the machine I bought some ten years later for £5,000, and which I still have in my basement. You don’t throw away five grand that quickly.
It took four strong men to lift it. The cabling was the thickness of my forearm. There was no screen. The data was recorded onto two compact cassette tapes; one held the addresses, the other the letter. The Redactron merged the two. We could send out two to three hundred letters a day, compared to our competitors’ 25. When we turned it on the lights dimmed across Fitzrovia. The “printer” was an IBM Golfball electric typewriter — 60 characters a second. At full chat it sounded like a machine gun.
It made us a lot of money, because we were the first PR company in our field to have a computer, or word processor. The sheer bulk of our mailings gave us a dominant position in dealing with the UK media. Of course the others caught up in the end — after about three years — but it was a remarkable illustration of technology actually changing our lives. We got smarter and we got richer.
And it’s all thanks to Evelyn Berezin. Ma’am, I salute you.
December 20th, 2010 at 19:45
I salute her too, excellent article, thank you Gwynn.
Women don’t get the credit they deserve in computing. My Aunt wrote the first program for the first computer in the City of London (not including Lyons Teahouses), 1kb, valve driven and took up four floors of an office block!!
Those were the days 🙂
December 20th, 2010 at 20:40
What a fabulous woman! i had never heard of her either.
thanks for great article…as usual!
I knew that Hedy Lamarr had a patent for some radar type device?
oh yep….and remember pre-fax machines.???..the very fun TELEX !
April 21st, 2011 at 03:20
Why is she not known? Easy answer, she is a woman, Jewish and as very big business soon got a hold of her ideas then well unfortunately she was left out in the cold. (I have heard of Redactron though)
I am just beginning researching a great story about an Aboriginal boxer for a documentary and I am surprised that no-one in my home country has approached this fella yet…Racism? -Absolutely…
Why people become famous is easily established, they are extremely palatable to the power elite (Justin Beiber, appeals to a predominantly white middle class paradigm) or they have a great PR…like you really…otherwise I would never have heard of Evelyn either!
August 26th, 2011 at 11:06
Evelyn Berezin is (or was – I don’t know if she’s still alive) a remarkable person, and her contribution needs to be recognised. However I think it’s a bit much to suggest that, “Without Ms Berezin there would be no Bill Gates, no Steve Jobs, no internet, no word processors, no spreadsheets…” She may well have built the first desktop word processor, but the industry would not have been a great deal different if she hadn’t.
By contrast, Intel did transform the industry with its 4004 processor chip. However it was not the first in the field. Ray Holt and Steve Geller had already built a microprocessor for the US Navy’s Tom Cat fighter, but couldn’t publish for reasons of national security. Four-Phase Systems was already manufacturing its 8-bit AL1 microprocessor for its System IV/70 display system, but the AL1 was never sold as a product in its own right. What made Intel unique was its recognition that the 4004 could be sold as a product in its own right, and at an uprecedently low price if produced in sufficient quantity.
The same thing applies to the MITS Altair. It was certainly not the first microcomputer ever made. Intel itself was already selling the Intellec 8, but not at prices the general public could afford. SCELBI was already selling the SCELBI-8H, but its success was curtailed when its inventor suffered two heart attacks at the age of just 30. What made the Altair so significant wasn’t being first – it was being promoted by Popular Electronics, and its inventor Ed Roberts managing to get it into production in sufficient quantity.
Even without Intel and MITS we would still have a microcomputer industry, however it would probably have developed in a different way. As I said, Berezin undoubtedly deserves greater recognition, but let’s keep it in perspective.
July 17th, 2013 at 03:39
This is Evelyn Berezin and I just ran across your article. Yes, still around. Thank you, Gwyn Headley, its very nice to hear words like these especially 60 years later.(Although Matt is right about the computer industry, — it would have happened no matter what.) And yes, I am a nice old Jewish lady, but although I have done a lot of interesting things since then, I have never played Mah Jong.
July 17th, 2013 at 15:17
Hello Evelyn, I’m delighted you found this old blog and flattered that you posted on it. I was amazed and impressed by your CV (sorry, resumé) and felt I had to write something in your honour. The Mah-Jong reference was inspired by a) the fact that lots of Jewish ladies seemed to play Mah-Jong and b) my first published book was “Know The Game: Mah-Jong”, still in print after 36 years. It’s a great game, if you like gin rummy. But as a non-Jewish Welshman, what would I know?
I still have the Redactron in my cellar, but I haven’t stoked it up for many years. I’m sure it’s still as noisy as ever.
I feel privileged that you made your comment — thank you. How did you guess it was my birthday as well?
July 24th, 2013 at 08:43
How very nice to get a true reaction , Love Mah Jong, I happen to have a very beautiful set made of Ivory and in the most gorgeous box. It is too precious to play with . I saw a similar one in a reputable shop in London (Burlington Arcade) and found out that I could not afford it . Very nice as mine is absolutely in mint condition with spare pieces in case you lose any.
I wish now that I had kept my first computer . I will try and contact Ms Berezin ,as I have a few questions for her
June 25th, 2014 at 22:46
Nice if a bit exaggerated… saying they’re be no Billl Gates, internet or spreadhseets? That’s just silly and completely lacking in understanding of the computing environment back then. I greatly admire Evelyn–which makes these exaggerations even more annoying–she doesn’t need them to still be a remarkable innovator and entrepreneur.