1966 · Video Door Security Design · Work 1159 of 1,871
A small kitchen table in Queens on an August evening, warm light from a low hanging lamp, on a pale yellow oilcloth three large sheets of white drafting paper in fine black ink lines, an apartment door with four small round peepholes stacked one above the other and a boxy camera on a vertical rail behind them, a tall cabinet with a small square screen, a grid of thin circuit lines, bare white margins, the hands of a Black woman of about forty-three smoothing the last sheet flat, the white cotton cuff of a nurse's uniform at one wrist, a plain gold wedding ring, a cold soldering iron in its wire stand.
Who
Marie Van Brittan Brown (1922–1999) was an African American nurse and inventor from New York. Born on 30 October 1922 in Jamaica, a neighbourhood of Queens, she spent her whole life there. She worked nights at a hospital in Jamaica and slept during the day; her husband, Albert L. Brown, was an electronics technician who was often out at work as well. Crime in the neighbourhood was rising, and the police were usually slow to answer emergency calls. So she and her husband designed a security system for their front door, with a camera, a monitor, an intercom, a remote-controlled lock and an alarm button. US Patent 3,482,037 names her as first inventor. Her system is regarded as the first television surveillance system for the home and a forerunner of today's video surveillance; more than 30 later patent applications cited it. The National Scientists Committee honoured her for the invention, and The New York Times reported on it. The Browns had two daughters; one of them, Norma, also became a nurse and an inventor. Marie Van Brittan Brown died in 1999 at the age of 76.
The moment
On 1 August 1966 Marie Van Brittan Brown and Albert L. Brown filed their invention with the US Patent Office, together with three sheets of drawings. They show a front door with four peepholes one above the other, so that tall adults can be seen as well as children. On the inside of the door a box holding a television camera moves up and down a vertical rail, driven by motors, and brings its lens to the chosen hole. The picture is sent by radio to a screen in a cabinet in the bedroom. From there one can talk to the visitor, record the conversation, open the door lock by radio or call a guard with an alarm button. The detailed description of the circuits reflects the expertise of Albert Brown, the electronics technician. The patent was granted on 2 December 1969. The picture shows the inventor's hands smoothing the last of the three sheets flat.
The other side
A woman who worked nights and slept alone during the day wanted to see who stood at her door, because the police were too slow to come. Her system was never commercially produced. Yet others built her ideas into their own surveillance and camera systems; the first of these patent applications came from the firm Seaboard System in 1971. Today video surveillance watches over banks, office buildings and apartment complexes. And because her name comes first on the patent, she is often named as the sole inventor, although the system was the work of both spouses.
What the sources leave open: The day is the filing date at the Patent Office, not a recorded working day. Whether the Browns ever built the system or installed it in their home is not documented; a New York Times article of 6 December 1969 was not followed by any reports on it. No public-domain photograph of her is known, so the picture shows only her hands. Kitchen, lamp, uniform and soldering iron are typified.