Oklahoma City installed the world's first parking meter in 1935 as a desperate measure to stop downtown workers from abandoning their cars on the street all day long.

A closer look

Oklahoma City installed the world's first parking meter in 1935 as a desperate measure to stop downtown workers from abandoning their cars on the street all day long. Local retailers were furious that actual paying customers couldn't find a place to park, so a journalist named Carl Magee invented a coin-operated clock that charged a nickel an hour to essentially rent a piece of asphalt. Naturally, people hated it immediately, viewing it as a dystopian tax on their fundamental right to leave their private property wherever they pleased. Today, city councils everywhere owe their bloated budgets to Magee's sadistic invention, heavily relying on predatory parking enforcement officers to write you a seventy-dollar ticket because your app expired three minutes ago!