Happy 71st Birthday

May 24, 1938: a patent granted for the first parking meter. The first one was installed in Oklahoma City the following July 16th. I'm not sure they scheduled it with that patent date in mind, but last week was the annual meeting of the 1,500 member International Parking Institute in Denver. I've come across several references that claim the first meters were the targets of vigilantes in Alabama. Why does that not surprise me? Yet I've been unable to find an original source for that information. I did find a story in the Wall Street Journal that put the state's courts in the middle of the battle: ...in 1937, the Alabama Supreme Court declared Birmingham's parking meters to be an unauthorized exercise of the city's taxing power, and ordered them removed. Other state courts allowed parking meters, but only if their primary purpose was to regulate traffic, not to raise revenue, a distinction that quickly faded in the lean days of the Depression." When the meters were installed in Paris, the good citizens of that city burned the building where the traffic authority was located. Or so says a widespread reference online...which I also have not been able to track down. Oh, and by the way, it was a professional violinist who invented the "boot" used in some cities (UPDATE: including Montgomery as of 2012) to enforce traffic laws.