Evelyn Berezin obituary
Evelyn Berezin, who has died aged 93, invented the Data Secretary, the first electronic word processor for secretarial use, and in 1969 founded a company in Hauppauge, Long Island, to manufacture and sell it. She had bumped into the glass ceiling and it was the only way she could get a senior position running a company.
The choice of product was tactical. As one of the few women developing computer hardware at the time, she was a two-finger typist and said she had to stay as far away as possible from looking like a secretary. However, she needed something that a small team could create at a price low enough to sell. In the 1960s, most computers were so expensive that companies rented them. While this benefited the supplier in the long run, it required a large initial investment, and Berezin did not have the capital.
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