Artifact Details

Title

Berezin, Evelyn oral history : 2015 fellow

Catalog Number

102746876

Type

Document

Description

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.

Date

2014-03-10

Contributor

Berezin, Evelyn, Interviewee
Hendrie, Gardner, Interviewer; videographer

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

New York, New York

Extent

77 p.

Format

PDF

Copyright Holder

Computer History Museum

Category

Transcription

Subject

New York City; Bronx; New York University (NYU); Hunter College; International Printing Ink, Ltd.; Brooklyn Polytechnic; Atomic Energy Commission (AEC); Lubkin, Samuel; Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation; ENIAC; Teleregister Corporation; Elecom; United Airlines; AT&T; General Electric; Digitronics; Redactron; International Business Machines Corporation (IBM); Burroughs; National Bureau of Standards (NBS); SEAC (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer)

Collection Title

Oral history collection

Credit

Computer History Museum

Lot Number

X7126.2014

Related Records

102746875 Berezin, Evelyn oral history : 2015 fellow