Comment by EdiX | Hacker News Reader

Comment by EdiX | Hacker News Reader

What makes this the first "True" Word Processor? Looking things up on Wikipedia I find that IBM's Expensive Typewriter, a computer program for the PDP-1, existed in 1961, several years before the Redactron Data Secretary. Both the IBM Expensive Typewrite and the Redactron Data Secretary used an IBM Selectric as input/output device.

Almost contemporary to the Redactron Data Secretary was the vastly more advanced NLS (from Engelbart's demo) which used a CRT for output and keyboard and mouse for input. The mother of all demos was given in december 1968, I couldn't find the exact date that Redactron was incorporated but the interview of Berezin by CHM gives it as "the end of 1968".

The Data Secretary might have been the first successful Word Processor but it appears that it's hardly the first one, but claiming that "Without Ms. Berezin there would be no Bill Gates, no Steve Jobs, no internet, no word processors, no spreadsheets; nothing that remotely connects business with the 21st century." seems incredibly hyperbolic.

I hate that every time I hear "first person to do X was a woman" I'm immediately skeptical because, if I look into it, most of the time is at minimum using a bunch of misleading definitions.

"Expensive Typewriter" required a PDP-1, a million-dollar machine (in current dollars). That was too expensive to be viable in a real-world business environment. The Redactron was a dedicated hardware device which of course was vastly cheaper, and achieved widespread success in the 1960s. So they were both "first" in word processing, but in very different ways.

http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102728582

> the Redactron system could facilitate automatic composition and printing of over 300 semi-personalized letters a day

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_processor_(electronic_dev...

> Evelyn Berezin invented a Selectric-based word processor in 1969, and founded the Redactron Corporation to market the $8,000 machine.

In a word, yup.

Right, one is a 'machine that can perform some word processing -like functions' and the other is a 'machine that a real user would use for word processing in an actual work setting'.

I agree but think this a period we need to go through, it will end on it's own when society thinking has changed and women inventions, role models, insights etc. have entered mainstream. For now there is some hyperbole but the pendulum will get to normal. This may take some decades but it's temporary.

> … I find that IBM's Expensive Typewriter,…

Expensive Typewriter wasn't IBM.

first person to free climb the nose route of el capitan was a woman.

go look it up, will be fun and you won't have to get angry about people celebrating women too enthusiastically as it is just true.

Being so enthusiastic as to exagerrate ends up taking away from it.

If you "have to" assume anyone who notices that "has to get angry about people celebrating women too enthusiastically" you're just pre-emptively calling a modicum of attention and seriousness misogyny. Allow for other possiblities, like confidence in one's own not being a misogynist, that can give a person the freedom to criticize such overdoing which ends up taking away.

What's the pertinence of the sex of the climber though. It's not celebrating Hill that is the problem. In 90s USA I doubt she had to make more effort than she would have if she were a man, isn't it 'just' "an incredible achievement" rather than "an incredible achievement, for a woman"?

I'm open to being wrong, for example if it were "new deadlift record holder has XX chromosomes" then the sex is notable because males tend to acquiring more muscle mass.

In climbing men and women seem well matched?

At a different scale it seems to me like the condescension of applauding a woman for parking her own car, like "wow you can park a car and have breasts, unthinkable" when in fact sex and parking are largely (if not entirely) orthogonal.

I guess I feel you like you are not arguing in good faith if you can't see why a woman being the first to achieve a physically demanding task at world class level is not interesting. Even if we were to put reality aside and assuming that men and women have equal physical talents on average it would still be interesting if only because it is rare for such things to happen and I can't believe I am bothering to explain this.

My position is that you can't maintain neutrality on the sex of people who make achievements if you keep highlighting it. It's a phenomenal achievement, period.

I really, genuinely, can't see why Hill's sex, say, is important here. Could you spell it out for me?

I've no idea what nationality she is, if she's say Inuit, would that be notable relative to her achievement?

Per your final paragraph a child recent told me that at school they learnt "Marie Curie discovered radiation".

Which was probably the child's own error, but the actual story of the Curie's [1] like others of that period (Cecilia Payne-Gaposhkin, say) is one of a community of scientists collaborating across borders of geography, and sex (, and perhaps class too).

To me it's very strange, if you wanted to say "anyone can be a scientist/engineer regardless of sex" then surely you'd de-emphasise sex. Instead it's made the primary focus, often put in the headline.

Usually too these things play towards the cult of personality, "X discovered Y" when the reality is often much more of a collaboration which I find it's usually far more pertinent than whether X had a vulva.

[1] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/themes/marie-and-pierre-cu...

>To me it's very strange, if you wanted to say "anyone can be a scientist/engineer regardless of sex" then surely you'd de-emphasise sex.

It is because historically there has been a tendency for the contributions of women to be actively de-emphasized by most, that some work to re-emphasize.

For sure the end-goal should be for us to reach a place where we just don't worry about it at all, but if over the last 50 years nobody had been actively talking and writing about women in science, many young women growing up would likely see very few examples they could relate to and be inspired by.

>many young women growing up would likely see very few examples they could relate to and be inspired by. //

Is that how inspiration works for you, it's not for me.

When I see an amazing achievement I don't think "oh, wait they're not my sex/race/nationality/height/eye-colour they can't inspire me".

My greatest inspiration at school as a pubescent male was probably a near-retirement woman, because of her passion and knowledge of her subject, her sex being immaterial to that ... am I especially peculiar in this.

Sure, you want a diverse roster of characters to study, but exaggerating achievements because past politics or societal mores don't conform to your preference seems asinine to me.

[PS thanks for responding, I really appreciate conversation on this as so many appear to hold contra positions that I can't discern the logic of.]

>if you wanted to say "anyone can be a scientist/engineer regardless of sex" then surely you'd de-emphasise sex. Instead it's made the primary focus, often put in the headline.

The reasoning behind this (which I'm not saying is good or bad) is that people see women and girls are underrepresented in science, or lacking role models etc. so perhaps pointing out the achievements of women in science can help dispel the notion (perhaps less common now than in the past) of science being a men's field, or worse, an old boys club.

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