Object Details
- Description
- This is a Rhodes spring-driven Pathfinder Model Mark-Time parking. M. H. Rhodes added parking meters to its line of household and industrial timing devices in the mid-1930s. This manual parking meter showed the number of minutes an automobile was parked over the time limit.
- Oklahoma City installed the first coin-operated parking meters in 1935, a practice soon adopted by other cities. Parking meters placed along curb lanes were meant to increase turnover, help enforce violations, reduce traffic congestion resulting from inadequate or haphazard parking spaces, and add much-needed revenue to municipal treasuries. City officials believed that parking meters were necessary to cope with the influx of automobiles into downtown areas and give more motorists access to stores and other businesses. But motorists and merchants challenged the legality of meters, claiming that they annoyed shoppers, deprived merchants and their employees of access to their front doors, and imposed an unfair tax on right-of-ways that were open to all. Most of the legal challenges failed, but meters were removed in several cities, and hours of enforcement were shortened in others. As parking meters proved their compatibility with downtown traffic and their success at increasing revenue, meters became an accepted way to regulate curb parking and fund traffic-related improvements as well as general municipal expenses.
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
- date made
- late 1930s
- Credit Line
- Gift of Henry R. Stiffel
- Physical Description
- cast aluminum (overall material)
- Measurements
- overall: 15 in x 3 1/2 in; 38.1 cm x 8.89 cm
- overall: 6 in x 6 in x 15 in; 15.24 cm x 15.24 cm x 38.1 cm
- Object Name
- Parking meter
