16 Things That Simply Would Not Exist Without Black Women

Marie Van Brittan Brown was a full-time nurse from NYC who, feeling unsafe in her home due to rising crime rates, invented a complex system to protect it. Brown's original invention had everything: a camera, monitors, two-way mic, peepholes, and even an alarm button that would immediately call the police. In 1969, she and her husband, electronics technician Albert Brown, were granted a patent. Brown's initial device paved the way for both home and business security systems, not to mention the closed-circuit television systems we use for surveillance around the world today.