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.