Happy Birthday Parking Meter!
2010 Marks 75th Birthday For Hated Invention
The parking meter was born today, May 13th, in 1935.
Huzzah!
Or at least the idea for the parking meter was conceived today in 1935.
Carl C. Magee, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, filed for a patent for a “coin controlled parking meter” on May 13, 1935.
It would take just over three years before Magee was issued a patent for his accursed contraption.
Magee invented the parking meter with the help of Gerald A. Hale and Professor H.G. Thuesen of Oklahoma State University.
Aren’t you glad you now know the name of the evil genius that has enraged countless motorists for the past 75 years? Now you can curse him and damn him by name.
Happy Birthday parking meter!
Hooray?
Here is some additional history of the parking meter at The Parking Meter Page.
Of course, Wikipedia has some thoughts on the history of the parking meter as well.
The pathetic, parking ticket obsessed idiots at The Expired Meter, will be chronicling other landmarks in parking history to further bore you to death during the course of the year.
We’re sure you are giddy with excited anticipation.
If used in a Reasonable manner…Parking Meters make sense.
In smaller communities, basic signage for Time Restricted parking controls the spaces that are not metered…like the city I grew up in.
The problem in Chicago, is there is a large quantity of people that Don’t care about anyone but themselves and their spawn.
Like the people I see daily that park in a HCP loading zone to get their Mail.
Or the People that park on a Hydrant to get Starbucks.
Do I like how the Meter System is being utilized in this city? No
Do I wish I could help fix the issued? Yup.
But as a private citizen, I can’t yet.
Just an FYI. In today’s dollars, the 1st parking meters charged anywhere from $0.75 an hour to $3.00 an hour. That was Oklahoma City.
Funny how folks in Chicago get their panties in a bunch when it costs…A WHOLE DOLLAR an hour to park in the 3rd largest city in the country.
TheReader,
I don’t think many (most?) people are really upset about the rates. What is troubling, though, is that the city sold the rights to the revenue for 75 years. A quick fix with long term dire financial implications.
That stupid meter is a Taurus. Nothing against Taurus per se: Miles Davis & Johannes Brahms were both Taurus and they were hip. (Well, Brahms was kind of a stick-in-the-mud.) The meter embodies the worst attributes of this otherwise cool sign, laziness & greed. A pox upon the inventors. May they spend eternity in hell looking for quarters.
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