This year marks the 75th anniversary of the invention of the parking meter. As any economist might guess, the parking meter was developed to ration scarce on-street parking, specifically to keep commuters from parking all day in curbside spots that downtown storeowners wanted to leave available for shoppers. As you might not guess, the meter was first introduced in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

The invention is credited to Carl C. Magee, an attorney and newspaper editor who had been asked by the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce to address the problem of oil company workers taking up all of the downtown parking spaces. According to Dianna Everett in the Oklahoma Historical Society’s Encyclopedia of Oklahoma:

Magee decided that the situation required the invention of a small, windable, inexpensively made, mechanical device to "time" the use of each parking space. In 1932 he designed and built a crude model and on December 21, 1932, filed for a patent. In order to refine the concept and build a real working prototype, he joined forces with the Oklahoma State University Engineering Department. … Professor H. G. Thuesen joined the project soon afterward and enlisted the help of Gerald A. Hale, former engineering student and 1927 OSU graduate. For the new model, dubbed the "Black Maria," they created the interior parts; a local plumber made the exterior shell. By late 1933 McGee, Thuesen, and Hale began looking for a manufacturer.

Magee filed for a patent on the improved device in May 1935 and received it in 1938. The Magee-Hale Park-O-Meter Company manufactured meters in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. The first parking meters were installed in July 1935 in Oklahoma City. Photos of Magee and of the first meters are available here. One of the first meters is currently on display in the Oklahoma History Center in OKC.

Were parking meters an immediate success? They were, of course, unpopular with the commuters who could no longer park all day in prime spots at a zero price. According to Scott Cooper in the current issue of the Oklahoma Gazette, the mayor of Oklahoma City denied responsibility for the meters; the city manager refused to pose for photos with them. But, according to the website of POM, Inc., the successor to the firm Magee founded, the meters were popular with storeowners, because they freed space for shoppers exactly as intended:

Their first production run of parking meters was installed on one side of the street in downtown Oklahoma City on July 16, 1935. Business was so affected by the parking meters after only three days, the merchants on the other side of the street demanded that parking meters be installed in front of their businesses as well.

See also The Parking Meter Page.