A traffic policeman explains a parking meter to two pedestrians, Lausanne, 1959. — **A traffic policeman explains a parking meter to two pedestrians, Lausanne, 1959** Swiss National Museum / ASL

‘Black Maria’ – the world’s first parking meter

The parking meter is the scourge of the hurried motorist, demanding coins they don’t have on them. It was originally designed less as a way to generate revenue and more to ease parking congestion in cities. The first parking meter in Europe was installed in Basel in 1952.

Thomas Weibel

Thomas Weibel is a journalist and Professor of Media Engineering at the Fachhochschule Graubünden and the Hochschule der Künste in Berne.

The patent application filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on 13 May 1935 by Carlton Cole Magee shows a futuristic device with a dial and a display panel on top of a pillar. Magee was a lawyer, local journalist and chair of Oklahoma City’s traffic committee. In his application, Magee wrote: “My invention measures the time of occupancy or use of parking or other space, for the use of which it is desirous an incidental charge be made upon a time basis.” As described in the patent application, the parking meter was designed to allow people to insert coins to pay for a specific time period and to clearly display when that time had elapsed.

**A parking meter in Long Beach, California, circa 1940** Wikimedia

Merchants in the city of Oklahoma had been bitterly complaining about a loss of revenue because the available parking spaces in the city centre were occupied all day long by the same vehicles. Magee sought a solution and sponsored a contest at the University of Oklahoma to come up with an idea for a parking meter. The idea was not entirely new as a patent had been filed seven years earlier for an electric parking meter which had to be connected up to the parked car’s battery with a cable clamp. For obvious reasons, that electric parking meter was never built.

Carlton Cole Magee, inventor of the parking meter 1268 YouTube

But Magee’s ideas contest at the University of Oklahoma failed to yield the desired results, so Magee took it upon himself to invite two professors to turn his idea into reality. The result was a mechanical parking meter featuring a clock mechanism with hands that had to be wound up by the motorist after inserting a coin. Magee designed the device primarily to stimulate the flow of traffic in Oklahoma rather than to fill the city’s coffers. The idea was that long-stay vehicles would be banished from the city centre, freeing up space for shoppers.

**Diagram of the parking meter patented by Carlton Cole Magee, 1935** Google Patents / U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

The patent office took its time and only granted the patent for the coin-operated meter three years later. But patience was not Magee’s thing so just two months after filing the patent application, the resourceful lawyer had the first 175 of these new parking meters installed in Oklahoma City. The charge of five cents an hour angered motorists, and the unpopular device was soon dubbed ‘Black Maria’. Outraged citizens protested against this modern-day ‘banditry’ and some parking meters were unceremoniously mowed down. But that didn’t change anything. Magee’s invention had put an end to Oklahoma’s parking congestion problem. In Europe, too, a conflict of use was becoming apparent in public spaces. The economic boom of the 1950s made motorcars affordable for broader sections of the population, and motorised traffic began to permanently change the urban environment. In 1950, 147,000 private cars were registered in Switzerland – a figure that had more than doubled from just 66,000 in 1940. The rows of parked cars in cities became a nuisance.

**A traffic policeman and a pedestrian next to a parking meter, Lausanne, 1959** Swiss National Museum / ASL

The solution came from the United States, where by the end of 1951, more than a million parking meters had been installed. “The idea of improving conditions in city centres that are clogged up with stationary traffic by introducing parking meters is certainly appealing”, said the then head of the Basel transport department, Adolf Ramseyer, and approved the installation of the first parking meters on European soil in 1952. Two years later, the German city of Duisburg followed suit and installed the first 20 parking meters. By the late 1950s, the devices had become a familiar sight in European towns and cities and councils had long discovered that parking charges were a lucrative source of revenue.

**A municipal employee emptying a parking meter in Seattle, Washington State** Wikimedia / Seattle Municipal Archives

The devices have never been particularly popular, however. Bernese songwriter Mani Matter sang about wanting to park his car but not having the correct change to put into the slot in his 1970 song ‘The parking meter’. And it was that very slot that ultimately spelled the end of the parking meter as the coin-checking mechanism was too delicate and its maintenance too costly. In Europe, the final curtain for mechanical coin-operated parking meters was the introduction of the Euro on 1 January 2002 – it simply wouldn’t have been worth changing the decades-old precision devices to accommodate the new coins. And even in Basel, the European pioneer of parking meters, individual mechanical parking meters were gradually replaced with collective electronic ones from 2007. The last coin-operated parking meter based on the legendary ‘Black Maria’ was taken down in 2011.

More of: 20th / 21st century Technology Transportation Article

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