A Nickel An Hour

THE OVERLOOK

By Tom Clavin

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I do like obscure or overlooked topics, which is a big reason why this week’s column originated as a history of the parking meter, with the first one being put into operation 88 years ago. But then it also became a tribute to something else I care about – newspaper editors. It would not seem that these two interests would intersect . . . but read on.

Carlton Cole Magee was born in Iowa in January 1892. After graduating from Upper Iowa University and obtaining a law degree, he practiced law until 1917, when he and his wife moved to New Mexico. There he developed a new passion – the newspaper business.

Magee founded the rather immodestly titled Magee’s Independent in 1922. It would change its name to The New Mexico State Tribune in 1923 and to The Albuquerque Tribune a decade later. (The Tribune closed in 2008.) Among Magee’s achievements as an editor was helping to uncover the Teapot Dome Scandal, which was a bribery scheme involving the administration of President Warren Harding.

Apparently, Magee was also a two-fisted editor. One day, when a judge who he had once exposed as corrupt knocked him down in a Las Vegas hotel lobby, Magee drew his pistol and fired. The judge was unharmed but the bullet accidentally killing a bystander. Magee was acquitted of involuntary manslaughter, but he thought it prudent to move to Oklahoma City. There, he became editor of The Oklahoma News and later The Oklahoma City News.

In 1933, he joined the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce traffic committee. Magee was assigned the task of lessening the escalating traffic congestion in the city's downtown. Local merchants complained that their sales were hurt by low traffic turnover, since parking spaces adjacent to downtown businesses were occupied by the same cars all day. Magee conceived the idea of a coin-operated timer that could be used to increase traffic turnover in busy commercial thoroughfares, and he sponsored a contest at the University of Oklahoma to develop such a device.

Not pleased with what the contest produced, Magee designed and patented his own model and sought Professors H.G. Thuesen and Gerald Hale from Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Oklahoma State University) to help him develop his model into an operating meter. The first model eventually created was powered by a clock-type mainspring, which required subsequent winding by parking patrons after they had fed coins into the meter. Magee later partnered with Hale to form the Magee-Hale Park-O-Meter Company, which today is POM Inc.

The first meter was installed on the southeast corner of First Street and Robinson Avenue in Oklahoma City on July 16, 1935. More soon followed. The totally mechanical devices required a nickel each hour and were placed at 20-foot intervals along the curb, on the spaces painted on the pavement.

Like most parking policies, this one stirred up controversy from the start. Drivers were outraged, calling the meters a tax on their right to own vehicles. But they parked at the metered spots anyway because it was where they could find a spot. Soon, it was difficult to find any spot without meters. Storekeepers clamored for them and city officials were not the least disappointed by the extra revenue. That summer 88 years ago, the era of the parking meter in America had begun. The initial cost of 5 cents per hour added up to a surge in revenue, which quickly led other cities to install parking meters of their own.

The earliest Magee-Hale meters were manufactured in Oklahoma City and Tulsa by Rockwell International, which moved its meter production to Russellville, Arkansas, in 1963. POM Inc., as constituted today, was organized in 1976 to purchase the parking meter production operations from Rockwell as well as its Russellville plant.  New ownership and production facility expansion occurred at POM in the 1980s, and the company unveiled its patented “Advanced Parking Meter” in 1992, featuring a choice of battery or solar power, among other improvements. According to its web site, the company today “has the largest plant in the world devoted to the manufacturing of digital parking meters.”

What of Carlton Magee? In 1924, he switched from Republican to Democrat and ran unsuccessfully to represent Oklahoma in the U.S. Senate. He returned to journalism, working for the E.W. Scripps Company. More so than as the inventor of the parking meter, Magee is known for the motto now carried by all of the company’s chain newspapers: “Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way.”

Magee died in Tulsa in February 1946 at age 54.

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books, including his latest, Follow Me to Hell. Please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com to purchase a copy.