Home security systems were first invented in the mid-19th century when devices using telegraph signals for alarm purposes were invented. These systems operated by establishing a direct link between people’s homes and commercial premises with local police stations through telegraph lines. If an intruder triggered a sensor, then the sensor was designed to immediately relay the information to the local police station. However, these systems were extremely costly and unrealistic for home use across the board.

After that, it was not until the 1920s that technology was available to produce systems that were cheap enough and could be easily implemented in a typical home. The first mass-marketed system was developed by Gustave Grossé in 1922 and was mass-marketed in the 1950s. Grossé is a man from Germany who lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and wished to develop a cheap and easy-to-use security alarm system since he was robbed in his house.

The alarm that Grossé had was of battery-charged bell units which were fixed at the doors and windows of the house. In case someone tried to open the locked door or window, the bell rang in the house to let the owner know that somebody was there and to scare him or her away. The system also entailed a switch to set the alarm, as well as to turn it off. He then started making and selling these basic alarm units all over the Midwest region, naming them Grossé Alarms.

Another black pioneer in home security was Marie Van Brittan Brown, a nurse from New York City. Thus in 1966, Brown came up with an effective alarm system to safeguard her home due to the high rising crime rate. Her patented model included several different door and window sensors, which were attached to a central base unit. If a sensor sounded an alarm when the system was armed, the control panel would ring a bell and flip on an exterior red light. This signal would tell neighbors to dial the police number on their telephone.

Brown’s system also included a camera that provided the homeowner a view through a set of peepholes before using the door. This was an early version of the video monitoring components and smart doorbell camera systems that are incorporated with each home security systems package currently in the market today. Thus, the great benefit of Brown’s invention was the capability of surveillance and counteraction to threats while minimizing one’s risk.

In the subsequent few decades, several companies ventured into the residential security business offering alarms and sensors that would emit a warning signal over telephone landlines whenever activated. However, these systems were in their infancy and were expensive, often complicated to operate, had high false alarm rates, and were exclusive to the relatively affluent. It was not until the early 1970s that it was opened in In Tuxedo Park, New York, which is an impeccable, rich security gated neighborhood about 30 miles north of New York City.

Burglaries and home invasions were on the rise in Tuxedo Park, and so the community members and the police department worked to find the solution. Inventors wanted to create a centralized automated home security system that was easy to use by executives at Bell Giant AT&T and Tuxedo Park police.

They developed the perfect prototype and distributed it to all residents of Tuxedo Park in 1974. The Tuxedo Park Police Alarm System, as it was known, involved the installation of small switches beside doors and windows that would be activated if they were opened and which would relay the information to a central switchboard at the police station via telephone lines. Each time a sensor was triggered, the central computer would recognize the house and notify police to report at the scene. The vulnerabilities of the technology were that it seldom gave false alarms because it could differentiate between intruders and other movements or shaking.

This model was quite effective in preventing the occurrence of additional break-ins in the small town of Tuxedo Park. Exciting news about the new system went viral and AT&T started to work on a commercial version of the system to make it available to the general public. They contracted local securities firms who helped in the installation of the systems and monitoring of the same. This was made available at an affordable cost since it targeted families of middle-class homeowners who wanted to protect their loved ones and property.

One of the convenient alarm systems of Tuxedo Park was based on the following advanced features that would characterize home security systems for the next 50 years – central monitoring, use of motion and perimeter sensors, urgent police dispatch, and false alarms. It made residential security go from being associated with luxury living in the modern world to popular usage.

Thus, while indicators can be traced back to the telegraph period, defined home security starts with the Tuxedo Park Police Alarm System in the early seventies. This was largely enabled by the invention and cooperation between law enforcement and engineers and inventors to come up with the first practical and widely used system. What started as an innovation to create home security systems that would include burglar alarms turned into sophisticated systems that include cameras, smoke detectors, smart locks, and even video doorbells that modern homeowners use.

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