Co-invented first home security system.
Marie Van Brittan Brown was the inventor of the first video security system based on the rarely-used closed circuit television (CCTV) originally developed by the military during WWII. Although she had informally studied electrical engineering, Marie was not an inventor by training or vocation, but rather a nurse who, like her husband Albert, an electronics technician, had irregular working hours at different times of the day and night. She was often home alone with her two children in a Jamaica, Queens neighborhood with a high crime rate –it had jumped by over 30% between 1960 and 1965– and a slow police response time. She was scared. And she had an inventive mind. Marie sketched out her three-part concept for a home security system, and then turned to Albert to design it. The rudimentary system included a camera mounted on the back of the front door that could move up and down for a view through several peepholes to assess the height of the visitor (child or adult) and a video receiver resembling a small television set, as well as a speaker and a microphone that allowed the homeowner to communicate with outside visitors– an intercom as we know it today. Later, she added a radio-controlled lock that could be unbolted by the house’s occupants and an alarm to alert a guard at a security station. The couple intended to install it in their home. They filed for a patent in 1966, with Marie cited as the lead inventor for “a home security system utilizing television surveillance.” It was approved on December 2, 1969. Although the Browns’ vision of the home security system was never manufactured on a large scale due to the high cost of production, the patent garnered them recognition in the inventor community and provided the baseline for current-day security systems. It would take decades before technology costs dropped enough to market a home security system for private residences. (Companies began selling CCTV for resident consumer in the mid-2000s, almost half a century after Brown’s invention.) Any security system today, be it in homes, business, banks and public areas, can be traced back to her invention, which is cited in 35 US patents.
Marie lived in a time when Black women’s access to education was seriously obstructed, their efforts barely acknowledged. When the couple was featured in The New York Times on December 6, 1969, the article referred to “Albert and his wife Marie,” although her name was listed first on the patent! The reporter, Stacy V. Jones, stated that they had patented an “audio-visual alarm system for household protection” that could be “operated from a bedroom…used to scan and interview a visitor at the door, and admit him or sound an alarm.” What a novelty! In 2019, the Times cited their invention as a “technological precursor to the modern home security system” in an article entitled “Seven Black Inventors Whose Patents Helped Shape American Life.” Serving as a role model for the next generation, Marie’s daughter Norma followed in her footsteps as both a nurse and an inventor, with over 34 inventions to her name. Awards and Accolades
· Award from National Scientists Committee – “among an elite group of African-American inventors and scientists”
· Twice featured in The New York Times
· Cited in 35 US patents
