The world’s first parking meter, known as Park-O-Meter No. 1, is installed on the southeast corner of what was then First Street and Robinson Avenue in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on July 16, 1935.
The parking meter was the brainchild of a man named Carl C. Magee, who moved to Oklahoma City from New Mexico in 1927. Magee had a colorful past: As a reporter for an Albuquerque newspaper, he had played a pivotal role in uncovering the so-called Teapot Dome Scandal (named for the Teapot Dome oil field in Wyoming), in which Albert B. Fall, then-secretary of the interior, was convicted of renting government lands to oil companies in return for personal loans and gifts. He also wrote a series of articles exposing corruption in the New Mexico court system, and was tried and acquitted of manslaughter after he shot at one of the judges targeted in the series during an altercation at a Las Vegas hotel.
By the time Magee came to Oklahoma City to start a newspaper, the Oklahoma News, his new hometown shared a common problem with many of America’s urban areas—a lack of sufficient parking space for the rapidly increasingly number of automobiles crowding into the downtown business district each day. Asked to find a solution to the problem, Magee came up with the Park-o-Meter. The first working model went on public display in early May 1935, inspiring immediate debate over the pros and cons of coin-regulated parking. Indignant opponents of the meters considered paying for parking un-American, as it forced drivers to pay what amounted to a tax on their cars, depriving them of their money without due process of law.
Despite such opposition, the first meters were installed by the Dual Parking Meter Company beginning in July 1935; they cost a nickel an hour, and were placed at 20-foot intervals along the curb that corresponded to spaces painted on the pavement. Magee’s invention caught on quickly: Retailers loved the meters, as they encouraged a quick turnover of cars–and potential customers–and drivers were forced to accept them as a practical necessity for regulating parking. By the early 1940s, there were more than 140,000 parking meters operating in the United States.
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Can you imagine Marshal Dillon paying a dime to tie his horse up in front of The Long Branch Saloon? He’d be bankrupt in a month!
Marshal Dillon might’ve, but Mongo would never.
I got a candy-gram for Mongo’s ass!
And thanks for bringing Madeline Kahn back into my overloaded memory!
Oy! I’m SO Tired!
And Miss Kitty herself, well, she’d just have to go find something else to occupy herself.
Parking meters.
Want me to NOT stop or shop in your city?
Put in parking meters.
“Next!”
Parking meter deal gets even worse for Chicago taxpayers, annual audit shows
https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2022/5/26/23143356/chicago-parking-meters-75-year-lease-daley-city-council-audit-skyway-loop-garages-krislov
Parking meter revenues are nearly back to pre-pandemic levels. With 61 years to go on the 75-year lease, Chicago Parking Meters LLC has now recouped its entire $1.16 billion investment, plus $502.5 million more.
The only thing more hated was the pay toilet. Now it’s the new $23 entrance fee to Manhattan.
Is that on top of the toll ?
July the 18th the first day some one broke into a parking meter and stole the nickels.
The solution: Paul Newman as Luke Jackson — ‘Cool Hand’ Luke … iconic …
$2/hr in Charleston.
Early democrat mechanized parasites.
And within dayss, people were paying with slugs.