23. Marie Van Brittan Brown
Marie Van Brittan Brown lived in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, New York in 1966. Her neighborhood suffered from a high rate of crime, and she noted the relatively slow response time to calls for police assistance. Brown worked as a nurse, her husband as an electrician, and their work schedules seldom coincided with each other. Both were concerned about their safety, especially at night. They worked together to create a home security system, which employed a camera which displayed images of someone outside their front door on a television set in their home. The camera could be maneuvered from inside the door, and was supplemented by peepholes.
They patented their system in 1966. It was the first closed-circuit television (CCTV) system, and variations of the design became ubiquitous around the world. Security cameras which record images came into existence in businesses, homes, and public areas around the world. As of 2016, according to a report by New Scientist Magazine, over 100 million CCTV systems operated around the world, helping prevent crime. They also became invaluable in helping investigators solve all forms of crime, identifying miscreants through the support of the public.