You typed one line at a time on an IBM Selectric typewriter-fixing typos along the way-and then saved each line on a device that used quarter-inch magnetic tape. Like the Data Secretary, it was not a modern word processor that allows you to type an entire document and then print it out. The Data Secretary was functionally identical to the IBM MT/ST, introduced in 1964. Later versions of Redactron word processors came with monitor screens for text, separate printers, greater memory caches, smaller consoles, faster processing speeds and more programmed features to smooth the writing and editing tasks. Berezin designed, and programmable logic to drive its word-processing functions. The device had 13 semiconductor chips, some of which Ms. Selectric Typewriter with a rattling print head the size of a golf ball. It was 40 inches high, the size of a small refrigerator, and had no screen for words to trickle across. Berezin called her computer the Data Secretary. Berezin (pronounced BEAR-a-zen) not only designed the first true word processor in 1969, she was also a founder and the president of the Redactron Corporation, a tech start-up on Long Island that was the first company exclusively engaged in manufacturing and selling the revolutionary machines. ….In an age when computers were in their infancy and few women were involved in their development, Ms.

Jay Nordlinger points me to an obituary in the New York Times a couple of days ago:Įvelyn Berezin, a computer pioneer who emancipated many a frazzled secretary from the shackles of the typewriter nearly a half-century ago by building and marketing the first computerized word processor, died on Saturday in Manhattan.

First mac word processor