Marie Van Brittan Brown and Albert L. Brown

Marie Van Brittan Brown (1922 to 1999) was an American nurse from the Jamaica area of Queens, New York City, who is remembered as a co-inventor of one of the earliest home security systems. Born Marie Van Brittan Felton in Manhattan, she worked long and irregular hours, including nights and weekends, in a neighborhood where crime was rising and police response was slow. With her husband Albert L. Brown, an electronics technician, she designed in 1966 a door system that combined several peepholes, a camera that moved between them, a two-way speaker and microphone, a remote lock and an alarm button, with a television monitor inside the home. The patent was granted on December 2, 1969. Manufacturers did not take it up at the time, but later patents cited it. Her place in this atlas rests on her career as a nurse, not on any medical discovery.