Carl Magee
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Carlton Cole "Carl" Magee (January 5, 1872 – February 1946) was an American
Magee founded the Magee's Independent in 1922, which would change its name to the New Mexico State Tribune in 1923 and to the
Carl Magee was an attorney and newspaper editor who joined the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce traffic committee in 1933 and, shortly thereafter, was charged with 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. After the contest, Magee designed and patented his own model and sought Professors
The first parking meters were installed in downtown Oklahoma City on July 16, 1935, and charged five cents per hour. Businesses benefited greatly from the decreased parking congestion, but some outraged citizens complained and even initiated legal action in response to installation of the meters. Legal action failed to halt implementation of the meters, however, and the added benefits of revenue generation quickly led other cities to install parking meters of their own.
The earliest Magee-Hale meters were manufactured in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma, 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 POM unveiled its patented “Advanced Parking Meter” (APM) in 1992, featuring a choice of battery or solar power, among other improvements. According to its website, the company today “has the largest plant in the world devoted to the manufacturing of digital parking meters.”
Magee switched from Republican to Democrat and ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate in 1924.[3]
He is best known in journalism today for the
Magee died in Tulsa, Oklahoma in February 1946.[6]
Sources
- ^ * "70 Years Ago. Tick Tick Tick." Smithsonian. May 2008 page 18.
- ^ 10,000 Famous Freemasons from K to Z, Volume 3. William R. Denslow, Harry S. Truman, Kessinger Publishing, 1959.
- ^ a b Roberts, Susan (1975). "The Political Trials of Carl C. Magee". New Mexico Historical Review. 50 (4). Retrieved June 2, 2023.
- ^ Crossen, Cynthia. When Parallel Parking Was New and Meters Seemed Un-American. in The Wall Street Journal. July 30, 2007.
- ISBN 1134981651– via Google Books.
- ^ Parking meter inventor dies, Billboard, March 2, 1946