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The theme for tonight is uncovering some (un)famous female inventors who never got their due.
Tonight we honor Marie Van Brittan Brown, who with her husband invented an audio-visual home security system in 1966.
She was a homeowner in a neighborhood that wasn’t very safe and the police took a while to arrive, so she and her husband, an electronics technician, invented a home security system. According to the Lemelson museum at MIT, Marie’s husband worked long hours and would return home to their high crime neighborhood — fearing for his safety she tried to figure out a way to figure out who was knocking on the door.
The invention had a doorbell, a video system, and Marie was quoted in theNew York Times as saying that with her invention “a woman alone could set off an alarm immediately by pressing a button, or if the system were installed in a doctor’s office, it might prevent holdups by drug addicts.”[5]
Unfortunately the costs were too high and the invention never took off. We salute the energy of marie for being the first penguin, but it’s also a time for us to reflect on the importance of making opportunities more equitable for women and those of color.
What if She had persisted and made connections with people in California or the Japanese electronics industry and had been able to visit factories? It also shows the gap between producers and consumers, as this was during the age of the white flight, and it didn’t seem that companies (run mostly by men) were that interested in security for homeowners in inner city neighborhoods at this time.
Marie inspires us to do better going forward!