[Photograph 2012.201.OVZ001.0428]

Photograph used for a story in the Daily Oklahoman newspaper. Caption: "Twenty-five years ago a new kind of slot machine became legal in Oklahoma City. And with their first cautious, skeptical operation of the devices (installed on the downtown curbs, of all things" Oklahoma Cityans launched a traffic revolution that was to be felt in virtually every part of the world where automobiles are no novelty. It was July 16, 1935, that city drivers first faced the need of dropping a nickel in the parking meter slot on downtown streets in order to buy protection from parking tickets. The meters operated only a day before a restraining order temporarily put them out of business. But after the round of legal wrangling was over, the meters clicked merrily on their way and in the course of 25 years have mushroomed from the original 175 test machines to today's 3,300 meters blanketing most of the city's congested areas....Harold Griffin, city treasurer, checked his records last week and reported that parkers' pennies, nickels and dimes clocked through the city meters in the 25-year period have added up to $3,994,285. Nor does this take into account the additional parking ticket revenue undoubtedly created by meter installation. Carl Magee, former Oklahoma City newspaper editor, gets the credit for touching off the parking meter revolution. It came about because he took seriously his assignment in the early 1930's as chairman of the Chamber of Commerce committee on downtown parking...With this basic idea he went to Prof. H. G. Thuesen of the Oklahoma A&M school of industrial engineering, and Gerald A. Hale, of the school's mechanical engineering staff............One of the big companies is the Magee-Hale Park-O-Meter Co., with a plant in Willow Springs industrial area. it is headed by Hale, one of the original designers.........There are some unusaul uses, too. For example, at Fisherman's Pier at Santa Cruz, Calif., meters are used limiting each parked fisherman to four hours of fishing at five sents an hour.