African American Marie Van Brittan Brown was a nurse who lived in Queens, N.Y. and worked long hours in the 1960s. Her husband was an electrician who worked different hours and was often home alone. Marie would worry about his safety in an area with higher crime levels.
So Marie wanted to make her home safe by developing a system to show who was at the door. That led her to invent the first closed-circuit TV security system that paved the way for our modern home security systems.
In 1966, Brown, with the help of her husband, invented a system that consisted of four peepholes, the sliding camera, television monitors, and two-way microphones. This surveillance system captured images of people, and the two-way microphones allowed Brown to communicate with the person outside. She also had a remote that would allow her to unlock the door at a safer distance, and she developed an emergency button that would send an alarm to the police or security.
Also, in 1966, Marie and her husband applied for a patent for their innovative security system, which was granted in 1969. It was the first patent awarded for home security.
