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History of creating the first parking meter in the world

Due to incorrect parking, you have probably been fined at least once or forgot to pay for parking meters… These two cases, you will agree, are not very pleasant, but here you have to think about the other side, if there were no parking spaces, it would be almost impossible to move on the roads. For example, think about what happens when a car is stopped incorrectly on the road or when it stops the line… The creation of a parking meter made the process much easier to manage.

Now let's move on to the 1920s. This period is considered to be an economic boom, when people also managed to buy cars. In the past it was considered a luxury and mostly was only available to the rich. While the specific fact was very good news for the car industry, the big cities faced the challenge of not being able to regulate a large number of cars. There was still no road infrastructure, parking spaces and relevant markings, which meant standing on the road for a long time… As a result of the economic boom, the world faced the need to solve a new problem. This fact made Carl Magee invent the world's first parking meter.

Magee lived in Oklahoma City and was an excellent journalist. Also, in other cities, there were problems with the roads, mainly due to the lack of parking space and its inefficient management. People stopped cars where they could find a free seat, the rest did not matter. They often left cars in front of shops, which became a big problem for their owners. Consumers were no longer going because there was no space for parking.

As Maggie was a journalist, some shop owners asked him for help. So thanks to his journal, he held a competition at the University of Oklahoma and asked students to create a time device that would allocate specific hours for cars to park. Gerald Hale's "Black Mary" won the competition, an improved version of what Maggie had created in 1932. Haley and Maggie founded the Magee-Hale Park-O-Meter Company, and on July 16, 1935, the first meter was installed on Robinson Avenue in the southeast of the city.

The world's first parking meter was a mechanical device that worked like clockwork and needed periodic winding. The devices were placed in the parking area at 20-foot intervals. This issue soon caused dissatisfaction among car owners as well, as they did not want to pay after specific hours. However, due to the fact that it became difficult to find a parking space, they had no other choice.

As you can see, the parking meter was quite successful in Oklahoma and brought a good profit to its inventor, so they started implementing a specific idea in bigger cities as well. By the early 1940s, more than 140,000 parking systems were in operation across the country. Relevant legislation was adopted soon. This in turn meant that anyone who exceeded the allowable length of the parking meter or did not pay the parking fee would be fined. Like, the economy of big cities has improved a lot, it has also become the largest source of income in the country, since 1944 the budget has included $10 million annually. Accordingly, arranging parking lots has become a good business for the country as well.

From the 1980s onwards, the specific system changed according to technological progress… People started allocating parking spaces with special signs. What they now consider to be just a parking lot was a bigger story then. As for the current situation, you will probably agree that arranging a parking lot has become a necessity for any institution.

So If you want fast and quality service, you should contact the elite technology team. We arrange the parking spaces using high quality materials and modern methods.