Parking Meters

Roscoe Bartlett was nearly ten years old when Oklahoma City became the first place in he world to install a parking meter. They had been invented by a local man, Carl Magee. Previous to inventing the parking meter, Magee was a newspaper man who was instrumental in revealing The Teapot Dome Scandal. The Teapot Dome was a large oil field in Wyoming. President Warren Harding transferred control over the oil field from the Navy to the Department of the Interior. Interior Secretary Albert Fall then leased the oil fields to Harry Sinclair without any competitive bidding. The year before, Sinclair gave Fall an interest free "loan" of $100,000, and more "loans" when he retired from Interior. Fall was convicted of bribery.

Magee's parking meter has remain virtually unchanged since his invention. In the 1980's a digital version was introduced, and lately the parking meter has suffered from competition with pay and display systems, but literally millions of parking meters around the world use Magee's basic design.

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