Carl Magee

Carlton Cole "Carl" Magee (January 5, 1872 – January 31, 1946) was an American lawyer and newspaper publisher. He also patented the first practical parking meter.^[1] He was born in Iowa. Magee graduated from the Iowa State Normal School, now the University of Northern Iowa, in 1894.^[2] He moved to New Mexico in 1917 with his wife.^[3]

Magee founded the Magee's Independent in 1922, which would change its name to the New Mexico State Tribune in 1923 and to the Albuquerque Tribune in 1933. The Tribune closed in 2008. Magee was important in bringing the Teapot Dome scandal to the fore. When a judge Magee had once accused of corruption knocked him down in a hotel lobby, Magee drew his pistol and fired, accidentally killing a bystander. Magee was acquitted of manslaughter, but moved to Oklahoma City to run the Oklahoma News.^[4]

While editor of the Oklahoma News, Magee 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. He built a crude model and applied for a patent on December 21, 1932. ^[5] He then sponsored a contest at Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Oklahoma State University) to develop a working device. After the contest, Oklahoma A&M Professors H. G. Thuesen and Gerald Hale agreed to help him develop his model into an operating meter.^[6] Magee later partnered with Gerald Hale to form the Magee-Hale Park-O-Meter Company, predecessor to the modern POM, Inc.

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 Tulsa, Oklahoma, by the MacNick Company. ^[7] Rockwell International later purchased the company and 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 E.W. Scripps Company motto, adopted from Dante for the Albuquerque Tribune and which is now carried by all Scripps chain newspapers: “Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way.”

Magee died in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on January 31, 1946.^[8]

Sources

^ * "70 Years Ago. Tick Tick Tick." Smithsonian. May 2008 page 18.
^ McElroy, Jack. Citizen Carl: The Editor Who Cracked Teapot Dome, Shot a Judge and Invented the Parking Meter. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2024.
^ ^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.
^ https://patents.google.com/patent/US2039544A/en
^ Ian McNeil, ed. (2002). An Encyclopedia of the History of Technology. Routledge. p. 461. ISBN 1134981651 – via Google Books.
^ McElroy, Jack. Citizen Carl: The Editor Who Cracked Teapot Dome, Shot a Judge and Invented the Parking Meter. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2024.
^ "Carl C. Magee, Retired Editor, Civic Aid, Dies," Daily Oklahoman, February 1, 1946, 1

[1] * "70 Years Ago. Tick Tick Tick." Smithsonian. May 2008 page 18.

[2] McElroy, Jack. Citizen Carl: The Editor Who Cracked Teapot Dome, Shot a Judge and Invented the Parking Meter. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2024.

[trials-3] Roberts, Susan (1975). "The Political Trials of Carl C. Magee". New Mexico Historical Review. 50 (4). Retrieved June 2, 2023.

[4] Crossen, Cynthia. When Parallel Parking Was New and Meters Seemed Un-American. in The Wall Street Journal. July 30, 2007.

[5] ttps://patents.google.com/patent/US2039544A/en

[6] Ian McNeil, ed. (2002). An Encyclopedia of the History of Technology. Routledge. p. 461. ISBN 1134981651 – via Google Books.

[7] McElroy, Jack. Citizen Carl: The Editor Who Cracked Teapot Dome, Shot a Judge and Invented the Parking Meter. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2024.

[8] "Carl C. Magee, Retired Editor, Civic Aid, Dies," Daily Oklahoman, February 1, 1946, 1

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