Imagine the plight of the urban planner, circa 1930.
What was once the transportation mode for the rich has become de rigueur for the masses. Streets meant for horse and buggy now needed to transport hundreds of cars to and from work every day. Then, of course, there was the question of parking. By the 1920s, downtown shop owners had begun to complain in earnest about the parked cars left by workers during the day.
Without proper infrastructure, shoppers had no place to stop; as a result, business was dropping rapidly.
This was a problem in cities across America. But no place was quite so innovative as Oklahoma City.
There, storekeepers turned to newspaperman Carl C. Magee (who, we should note, is also famous for uncovering the Teapot Dome Scandal in New Mexico and shooting a corrupt judge in a fight in Las Vegas). Magee had his own ideas, but he also sponsored a contest calling for designs of a timing device that would allocate set amounts of time for parking. The winner - the Black Maria - was based on a machine created by Magee and Gerald A. Hale. Hale and Magee formed the Magee-Hale Park-O-Meter Company. The first meter was installed on the southeast corner of First Street and Robinson Avenue on July 16, 1935.
