Computer History Museum

Berezin, Evelyn oral history : 2015 fellow

Evelyn Berezin was born in New York City in 1925. In 1951, she joined a start-up company, Elecom, based in Brooklyn, which had started to build digital computers. From 1951 to 1969, she worked at a number of companies designing a variety of special-purpose computer systems. While working for Teleregister in 1962, Berezin designed one of the largest systems built at that time: a passenger reservations system for United Airlines. The design of the central system (three independent, linked processors) served 60 cities throughout the United States with a one-second response time and with no central system failures in 11 years of operation. In 1969, Berezin founded her own company: Redactron, a new maker of word processors. Redactron moved into its first building in December 1969. Redactron's first word processors were delivered in September 1971-one and a half years after the company was started with only nine people. A worldwide marketing organization was set up as well as a service organization, and Redactron grew. In 1975, it employed just under 500 people. Redactron was sold in 1976 to the Burroughs Corporation. Berezin has served on Boards of a number of public companies, including CIGNA, Koppers Co., Datapoint, and Standard Microsystems. Additionally, she has worked as Advisor or Board member with about 20 start-up technology companies. Berezin is currently on the Board of Directors of the Stony Brook (University) Foundation and is a member of the Oversight Committee of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at NYU.

Item Details

Date
2014-03-10 (Made)
Type
Document
Catalogue number
102746876
Organization
Computer History Museum (Publisher)
People
Berezin, Evelyn (Interviewee)
Gardner Hendrie (Interviewer)
Category
Transcript
Format
PDF
Credit line
Computer History Museum
Extent
77 p.
Place of publication
North America/USA/NY/New York
Language
English
Acquisition number
X7126.2014
Subject
General Electric, United Airlines, ENIAC, Burroughs, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Hunter College, SEAC (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer), Brooklyn Polytechnic, AT&T, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation
Archive collection
CHM Oral History Collection
Archive hierarchy
CHM Oral History Collection