Marie Van Brittan Brown (October 30, 1922 – February 2, 1999) was an American nurse and innovator. In 1966, she invented a video home security system along with her husband Albert Brown, an electronics technician. In the same year, they applied for a patent for their innovative security system, which was granted in 1969. Her innovation has had a huge impact on the entire security system. Her idea has expanded beyond just security for those at home, and her ideas can be seen with security systems in businesses around the world. Brown was born in Jamaica, Queens, New York; she died there at the age of 76 in 1999. Early life Marie Van Brittan Brown's father was born in Massachusetts and her mother was from Pennsylvania. Both were African-American. Not much is known about the early life of Marie. Marie married an electrician named Albert Brown. Marie and her husband lived at 151–158 & 135th Avenue in Jamaica, Queens, New York. She worked as a nurse and her husband was an electrician, so they did not always have normal hours or simultaneously work. Her mother, father and grandmother all had the nickname "Dee Dee". She did not have any siblings. Marie and Brown had two children, a boy named Albert Jr. and a girl named Norma. Norma followed in her mother's footsteps and became a nurse and inventor. She had success in the innovative field as well as her mother, as she had over 10 inventions. Brown died on February 2, 1999, at the age of seventy-six. Home Security System Due to the fact that Marie was a nurse and her husband Albert was an electrician, they both had irregular work hours, and often their work hours would not overlap. This would lead to many nights where Marie was left alone in her home at night. The crime rate in her neighborhood was very high, and inspired by the prolonged length of time it took the police to arrive in her neighborhood, Brown invented the first home security system. At the time, Brown was forty years old. When Marie and her husband first came up with their security system, their invention consisted of four peepholes, a sliding camera, TV monitors, and microphones. The cameras could go from peephole to peephole. These cameras were connected to the TV monitors inside her home, and using those TV monitors, Marie could see exactly