The first coin-operated parking meter in the US was installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. In what year was it installed?
Parking meter connection from the vehicle to the meter. Holger George Thuesen and Gerald A. Hale designed the first working parking meter, the Black Maria, in 1935. The History Channel's... "History's Lost and Found" documents their success in developing the first working parking meter. Thuesen and Hale were engineering professors at Oklahoma State University and began working on the parking meter in 1933 at the request of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma lawyer and newspaper publisher Carl C. Magee. The world's first installed parking meter was in Oklahoma City on July 16, 1935. Magee received a patent for the apparatus on 24 May 1938.
Parking meter have learned the hard way that these machines must be upgraded regularly, essentially playing an arms race with vandals. In Berkeley, California, the cut-off remains of meter poles were a common sight during the late 1990s, and parking was largely free throughout the city until the city government installed digital parking meters with heavier poles in 2000 (which were eventually vandalized as well). Parking meters installed by municipalities are considered legal if the parking meters are used for purposes of parking regulation and not for revenue purposes. In a 1937 case in Oklahoma, H.E. Duncan contended that the ordinances impose