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N0KFQ > TODAY 16.07.11 18:10l 54 Lines 2479 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Jul 16
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Sent: 110716/1534Z 10017@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.0.4
Jul 16, 1935:
World's first parking meter installed
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 this day in
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. Today,
Park-O-Meter No. 1 is on display in the Statehood Gallery of the
Oklahoma Historical Society.
73, K.O. n0kfq
Another old retired guy
E-mail: n0kfq@winlink.org
N0KFQ@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
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