A jukebox!  If you walk into a themed restaurant where they have jukeboxes, it’s still a thrill. The thought of choosing some tunes that remind us of our teen years can’t help but bring back fun memories. 

But times have changed. We all have phones that carry a multitude of our favorite songs, and personal earbuds let us listen anytime and anywhere to what we want.  Opportunities for communal listening are rare. 

When the first jukeboxes (then called “nickel-in-the-slot phonographs”) were created, it was very exciting. The first version played music from a single cylinder. Only the machine owner could change it. What’s more, there was no way to amplify the sound. To listen, the customers inserted a nickel and then had access to one of four listening tubes attached to the machine.

These phonographs were far from the jukeboxes of today, but they were a great novelty.

Who Thought of the Jukebox?

The inventor of the first nickel-in-the-slot phonograph was a man named Louis Glass (1845-1924). He grew up in northern California, and as soon as he could work, he took a job as a telephone operator. (Young boys were initially hired as operators because telephones were expected to replace the need for messengers. The boys proved to be too rambunctious to work in offices since the telephones were not yet very busy. Soon women were hired.)  Glass held the job long enough to set aside savings that he put toward investing in telephone companies in Oakland and San Diego.

Glass also worked as an agent of the Edison General Electric Company and was manager of Pacific Phonograph Company when it was founded in 1889. As a result, he was very familiar with Edison’s inventions. He often demonstrated the Edison phonograph for prominent San Francisco citizens.

Thomas Edison initially envisioned the phonograph as a machine that would be used for playing back information in an office setting. But Glass, working with business associate William S. Arnold, was experimenting with another use for the machine. What if they could rig it to be a coin-operated music-playing machine?

Music-Playing Machine

As early as 1871, inventors created mechanical toys that operated when coins were inserted. This likely inspired Glass and Arnold. The machine they used for their device was the Edison Class M electric phonograph.  If someone deposited a coin in the box attached, this activated the cylinder so that music played. Unfortunately, there was no way to amplify the sound. Listeners had to use one of four listening tubes attached to the machine, inserting the tube in their ear.

An article in Popular Mechanics described the machine as “encased in a lead-lined oak cabinet. It had a 25-lb sulfuric acid battery that provided electricity through wires to the motor.”  The cylinder needed to be changed manually by an operator.

Despite these drawbacks, Glass and Arnold were excited by their invention. They got permission to install the first “nickel-in-the-slot” machine in a San Francisco bar near their offices, called the Palais Royale (1889).

Glass told others that during the first 6 months, the machine made $1000. This was an astounding amount of money for the day. Bar owners likely received a percentage of the take, but having one of the phonographs in their establishment would also help build traffic and sell more drinks.

One bar owner had a worthy suggestion: He said that in order for the device to be installed in his establishment, he wanted the recording to add a line at the end: “Go over to the bar and get a drink…”

Over the next 18 months, Glass approached other locations and placed at least 13 more of these devices. They were in bars, restaurants, and even ferries traveling between Oakland and San Francisco. 

Changes and New Uses

There were no great advancements on these devices for awhile, but there were new uses. Carnivals were thrilled to have a new attraction to feature, so they purchased them and created new cylinders with their own offerings. Because they were hands-on with the machines, they could record new songs or silly speeches and lure customers back again and again.

The Next Advance

The next big change in the coin-operated music machine was spearheaded by a man named John Gabel. He was 12 when he and his family arrived in America from Slovakia in 1884. He eventually moved to Chicago and worked for a company manufacturing calculators. From there he moved on to a novelty company that made coin-operated vending machines.

In 1898, he left the company and started The Automatic Machine and Tool Company, also selling vending devices.

Gabel was convinced he could create a coin-operated music machine that offered choices. The machine was patented in 1906 as the “Automatic Entertainer” and was a marvel.

“The Automatic Entertainer”

The machine had two stacks of 12 10-inch records, offering 24 selections.  The customer used a large dial on the front of the cabinet to choose a song. When a customer deposited a coin, the wonder began. A mechanical arm retrieved the selected record from its stack and placed it on the turntable. The tone arm came down on the outer rim of the chosen record, and the song began to play.

Needles on these machines became dull very quickly and could damage the next record. Gabel created a system where the needles changed automatically. At the end of the record, the old needle dropped out of the tone arm, and a new one was put in place automatically from a “birdcage-like structure” on the side.

Gabel’s other innovation was the addition of a large horn to amplify the sound emanating from the machine. This was a huge leap forward.

The Automatic Entertainer not only offered customers a choice of songs, but it offered a way to amplify sound.  Gabel’s system was soon being placed in bars and dance halls.

New Companies

Justus Seeburg’s (1871-1958)  background was in manufacturing player pianos.  As records were produced, he knew it was time to change his business model and step away from the player pianos. His early phonograph combined an electrostatic loud speaker with a coin-operated record player.  It had eight separate turntables mounted on a rotating Ferris wheel-like device that permitted patrons to select from eight different 10-inch 78 rpm records.

In 1938, Seeburg introduced the Symphanola “Trashcan” jukebox.  It held 20 10-inch 78s that slipped into a shallow drawer when chosen and that drawer rose up to meet the playing arm.

Seeburg created the first device that could play 45s. It had a sideways moving carriage for pulling the requested records.

Perhaps most memorably, the Seeburg company created the iconic table-mounted machines from which customers could select  jukebox choices remotely.

Wurlitzer Jukeboxes

The Wurlitzer name is strongly associated with the jukeboxes of  memory.

The Wurlitzer family had a long history in the music business. In Europe the family was well-respected for making musical instruments. They came to the United States and settled in Cleveland in 1853.  They continued to make instruments but by the late 1930s, the company added jukeboxes to their line.

Wurlitzer’s biggest contribution to the industry may have been the design work. They hired a man named Paul Fuller who came to the company from store design and started with Wurlitzer in 1935. His design ideas forever changed the look of jukeboxes.

His most famous and often-copied model was the 1015, known as the Bubbler. The Wurlitzer 1015 offered a choice of 24 records (78s). It was introduced in 1946. In the following two years, Wurlitzer sold an astounding 56,000 units.

All of Fuller’s designs featured finely polished wood with spectacular designs in chrome, colored plastic, and glass. The Bubbler featured ornate, Art Deco touches. The most distinctive feature of the 1015 was a set of eight transparent, colored tubes on either side of the grille. Inside these tubes, a heated fluid created a continuous stream of bubbling action. The unit’s glass section also held revolving, spotlighted pieces of colored plastic, adding to its visual appeal.

Customers could see into the jukebox and watch the machine move to pull the record that they selected.

And Then There Was Rock-ola

Rock-ola was founded in 1927 by David Cullen Rockola. The company initially manufactured coin-operated scales, slot machines, and pinball games for amusement parks and arcades.

Rock-ola introduced its first jukebox in 1935. It, too, featured great looking jukebox cases that were perfect for what became the “Golden Age of Jukeboxes.” (1940-50s)

And certainly, the company name was an asset as rock-and-roll became part of the culture. Who wouldn’t want a jukebox from “Rock-ola?”

 Today Rock-ola is the last jukebox maker in the business. They are the main suppliers of the Johnny Rocket-themed restaurants. There are more than one hundred diners in the U.S. and a reported 225 worldwide.

The Name “Jukebox”

For almost 40 years, the industry resisted calling these phonographs “jukeboxes.”  “Juke” came from the Gullah (Creole) language, and “juke joint” referred to a place for music and dancing (and perhaps drinking and gambling).  But eventually, the catchier name of jukebox replaced the very awkward “automatic coin-operated phonograph.”

The Military and Music

Jukeboxes changed the music world in many ways, and one of them happened because of the way jukeboxes were used on military bases.

The military in World War II needed an unimaginable number of soldiers, so both the Army and the Navy accepted people from all parts of the country representing many ethnicities. All of them had different tastes in music.

 Jukebox makers saw that their machines needed to offer a wide variety of choices. Soon jukeboxes were loaded with records featuring American blues, gospel music, country music and pop records. 

Over time, musicians, too, began answering this need. Music began combining styles and tempos to grow into the ever-changing music we hear today.

Jukeboxes and the Record Business

In the 1940s, 75 percent of all records manufactured went directly to jukeboxes. It was an important market-testing device for new music. Jukeboxes could tally the number of plays for each title.  Those that were popular on the jukeboxes also sold well to the public. It was a win-win situation. Record producers loved them.

Jukebox “play” during the 1950s, became so significant that Billboard magazine began printing a weekly record chart that listed jukebox plays. 

The music industry also took lessons from what worked and what didn’t. They soon saw that the most popular songs had memorable words and catchy tunes. Listeners particularly loved a chorus that repeated frequently. That way, even if they couldn’t remember some of the verses of a song, they could join in on the chorus.  

Times Change

While most of us still enjoy buying a hamburger at a 1950s-style diner with a jukebox, customers are no longer reliant on this for their music. 

First came in-home record players and radios. Then came the transistor radio. Suddenly people had “music in their pockets.” 

Today of course, the easy availability of digital music is almost all anyone knows. Despite that, the jukebox is still an enormously fun stroll down memory lane.

Mr. Potato Head had a very humble beginning. The inventor who came up with the idea did so in 1949. At that time many Americans still had home gardens that were necessary because of rationing during the war.

To George Lerner, the idea of making funny faces on a potato or another vegetable spurred his imagination. Initially, he experimented by adding items like bottle tops, pipe cleaners, and parts of other vegetables. He quickly  saw that all types of characters could be created.

This was the beginning of what eventually became Mr. Potato Head.

Early Job in the Toy Industry

George Lerner was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1922. By the time he was 20, he lived in East Moline, Illinois, where he worked at the Buddy L Company, an offshoot of the Moline Pressed Steel Company. Their specialty was manufacturing automobile fenders and other stamped body parts for cars, trucks, and some types of farm equipment.

Long before Lerner joined the company, Moline Pressed Steel added a small division to make metal toys like trains, trucks, and cars. That was the department where Lerner worked.

War on the Horizon

By the late 1930s, American companies were responding to governmental pressure. President Roosevelt hoped that by exporting equipment and tools needed for the war in Europe, he might be able to keep the U.S. out of war.

But in the meantime, manufacturers needed to do their part to make military supplies. At Moline Pressed Steel, all metal would be used for the war. In the Buddy L toy division, metal toys were redesigned as wooden toys. Cars, trucks, and trains continued to be made but in ways that saved steel.

War Affects All

For George Lerner and other young men, the war altered their future. They were required to register for the draft. Even if they were not sent off to fight, young men often had to move to be where the jobs were.

It is not clear how the war affected Lerner, but after the war, he returned to Brooklyn where he grew up.

Continued Dreaming about Toys

By 1949, Lerner was seriously contemplating how to make his “potato toy” something he could market. His early assumption was that since many people still had home vegetable gardens, the vegetable itself was something they could obtain easily.

What he needed were small items to use as facial features for funny faces. If he could manufacture ears, mouths, eyes, and other features then he could package and sell them. To his advantage, one of the side benefits of the war was that plastic was now being used in mass production.

In 1951, he and a partner went into business together. With Julius Ellman, another Brooklynite, Lerner and Ellman combined their names to become the Lernell Company. The two men patented many toy inventions. The business continued successfully for another thirty years.

Funny Face Man

While it is unclear whether Ellman was part of the packaging of Lerner’s “potato toy”, the fact that the two had created a business may have made it easier for Lerner to come up with the needed funds and to invest in manufacturing plastic facial figures for his toy.

The first packaged set included lips, eyes, ears, hairpieces, a hat and other accessories that Lerner thought were fun. Each plastic piece had prongs on it that were sharp enough to penetrate a potato skin, zucchini, or whatever basic fruit or vegetable a child chose to use.   

Lerner called his new toy the “Funny Face Man.”

Making the Rounds

With a prototype of “Funny Face Man” under his arm, he began making calls on toy companies. However, the food rationing that took place during the war left an indelible mark on Americans.

Toy company executives worried that the toy would be seen as “wasteful.” No one wanted it.

But Lerner had another idea. In that day, cereal companies added “premiums” to their boxes of cereal to increase sales. Some premiums were small plastic toys; others were cards with games or riddles on them. Kids often requested a certain cereal because they wanted the toy.

When Lerner met with the executives at Post Cereal, they liked the Funny Face Man idea. All features were packaged as a long strip (like a bookmark) with plastic items attached. Post paid Lerman for all rights and soon the packaged set was offered inside one of their cereals.

New Interest

Whenever a product reaches the public eye, it often sparks new interest. This is exactly what happened with Funny Face Man.

A textile remnant company in Providence, Rhode Island, was growing and adding product lines. The Hassenfeld family began in textile remnants and expanded into fabric pencil pouches and fabric-lined pencil boxes. They soon added pencil-manufacturing to their products.

When father and son (Henry and Merrill Hassenfeld) saw the new premium offering in a Post cereal box, they contacted George Lerner. They wanted to buy the rights from him. When they learned that Lerner had already sold full rights to Post Cereal, Hassenfelds suggested a deal.

They encouraged Lerner to buy the rights back from Post Cereal. Hassenfelds promised they would re-package the Funny Face Man and sell it as a separate toy.

When Lerner approached Post executives, Post said they would sell the rights back to him for $5000 if Hassenfelds would put in an additional $2000.

Re-Named Mr. Potato Head

The Hassenfelds moved quickly. They began manufacturing the toy right away and decided to rename the toy. Calling it Mr. Potato Head, the first sets were marketed in 1952. Each set included more than twenty plastic features packaged together–hands, feet, ears, two styles of mouths and pairs of eyes, four noses, three hats, eyeglasses, a pipe, and eight felt pieces resembling facial hair. The recommendation was for children to use any type of larger vegetable such as a potato. 

First Toy Advertised to Children on Television

Hasbro—as the company became known–really wanted to grow their business, and they saw Mr. Potato Head as a great opportunity. The television industry was still small, but advertising toys to adults to buy for their children was a growing field.

The Hassenfelds decided to change the formula. There were some new television shows for children on the air. Advertising on those programs was less expensive, and the Hassenfelds felt that if they could promote Mr. Potato Head directly to children it could work. This was a first for the television industry. As Hassenfelds proved, the “nag” factor by children could be very effective!

In addition to the commercials, local toy stores got behind the product. A search through any local paper from 1952 show that Mr. Potato Man was well-advertised. The cost for the feature packages? 98 cents.

Toy was a Hit

The Hassenfelds spent well. Within several months, the kits raked in $4 million in sales, according to Paige Polinsky’s book about toy trailblazers. By the end of the first year, more than a million Mr. Potato Head sets were sold.

Fewer Toys Then

Mr. Potato Head was marketed as “the most wonderful friend a boy or girl could have.” And it was. Children had many fewer toys then—no Barbie, no American Girl, no My Little Pony, not even a GI Joe. 

The beauty of Mr. Potato Head was that kids used him in many types of make-believe play. They went to bed, and the next morning they—and Mr. Potato Head—were off on new adventures.

For that reason, Hassenfelds quickly moved forward to expand the play. Mrs. Potato Head was introduced in 1953. She came with a purse, earrings, and stylish accessories.  Clearly, the Hassenfelds were on to a good thing.

Son Spud and daughter Yam came along shortly. The family had a car, a trailer, and a boat. They even got pets.

Changes

The next version of Mr. Potato Head was a boxed set. The company was now called Hasbro, and they decided to try including a Styrofoam head and a plastic body that could be used for creating the figures.

But the Hassenfelds soon saw that the Styrofoam didn’t last long. It became heavily pockmarked as children poked features into it. The Styrofoam soon broke off into pieces.

Expanding the Market

In the early 1960s, Hasbro introduced the Tooty Frooty Friends. This kit contained 60 plastic pieces. Kids could create Katie the Carrot, Pete the Pepper, and Oscar the Orange. 

But still the company sensed there was more room to grow. They turned to American history, folk lore, and the news of the day. Soon Mr. Potato Head could explore the Wild West and with another kit, he could dress as an astronaut and travel in a spaceship to other worlds. Other career and adventure sets were created.

Consumers Urge Changes

In 1964, Hasbro decided some product changes were necessary. Parents complained that their kids took vegetables to their rooms to play with their Mr. Potato Head toy. Then they forgot about them. By the time someone went in to clean the room, the vegetables were moldy.

The other complaint Hasbro received was that the spikes on the plastic pieces were quite sharp. They needed to be in order to penetrate anything from a raw potato to a zucchini or eggplant. Parents felt they were dangerous.

For that reason, Hasbro transformed the toy. The government often noted that they wanted to create a child safety agency. This could lead to some toys being banned, and Hasbro wanted to keep their toys off any list of banned toys.

A New Version of Mr. Potato Head

As the developers re-worked Mr. Potato Head, they created a plastic head and a separate body that was sold with the kit. The add-on features could be snapped into pre-cut holes that existed on the head and body, so they did not need to be sharp. Hasbro also made the add-on features larger than previously. This meant they did not present a choking hazard.

The Hasbro changeover came at the right time. In November of 1969, President Richard Nixon passed the Child Protection and Toy Safety Act. With that law in place, the government created a toy testing department. They banned any toys that seemed dangerous.

By 1974, more than 1500 toys were banned, but Mr. Potato Head was still flying high.  

Within a few years, another change was made. Hasbro quit manufacturing the Mr. Potato Head body and created a larger head. The head had an added element: the back of it opened so that all the smaller pieces could be stored inside.

Not a Couch Potato

By the 1980s, Americans were becoming more interested in physical fitness. Video games were introduced which meant that something needed to counter the time children spent sitting in front of a game console.

For that reason, Hasbro made a Mr. Potato Head that wore a baseball cap and sneakers and toted a water bottle—he wasn’t going to be called a Couch Potato!

He also gave up his pipe (a long-time accessory). No more bad health habits for him.

Focusing on health was very much in vogue at that time, and the “good health” Mr. Potato Head came to the attention of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. For three years (from 2005-2007), Mr. Potato had the pleasure of being a giant balloon in the Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Classic Toy

Forty years after Mr. Potato Head was introduced to the public, the toy and many of the accessories earned a full-time spot on most toy store shelves. But then a miracle happened.

Animator and movie director John Lassater began working on a new movie called “Toy Story.” The movie told the tale of a group of toys and their adventures. Lasseter knew the movie’s audience was children, but he wanted to create characters that were appealing to their parents. By choosing classic toys parents remembered, Lasseter felt adults would be more willing to take their children to the movies (often multiple times).

One of the main stars was Mr. Potato Head. He was accompanied by Mrs. Potato Head. When the movie premiered in 1995, the film was a huge hit. Toy sales exploded as well. 

More Branding

By this time, the consumer world was different. Hasbro knew that with a new movie out, they would be able to sell many more toys as well as anything they could brand with Mr. Potato Head. Soon they had deals for everything from children’s underwear and board games to key chains.

Sadly, George Lerner died that year (1995). While he would have known of the movie deal, he did not have the pleasure of sitting in a darkened theater with a tub of popcorn watching Mr. Potato Head come alive.

Success Continues

Fortunately for Hasbro, the Toy Story achievements continue. There have been three additional successful sequels. Toy Story 5 is slated for release in June of 2026.

In the meantime, Mr. Potato Head was inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame in 2000.  In 2010, George Lerner was posthumously given a Toy & Game Innovation Award from Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.  

And not to be forgotten is the fact that George Lerner and Julian Ellman ran a successful toy manufacturing business in Brooklyn for more than 30 years. While Mr. Potato Head was certainly the most successful toy to be introduced, Lerner and Ellman hold many patents for different toys and games they developed. Not every invention needs to flourish if you have a triumph like Mr. Potato Head.   

The QWERTY keyboard is a relic of the past, but today’s keyboards on laptops, computers, and phones carry it forward. Why?

The electronics of our modern devices require regular software updating or even device replacement to keep up with all the technological advances. Odd that keyboards stay the same. Here’s why.

The Patent

A Milwaukee newspaper editor and printer, Christopher Sholes (1819-1890), worked with his friends Samuel W. Soule (1830-1875) and Carlos Glidden (1834-1877), to create a writing machine. Sholes happened to be the one who filed the patent.

The patent was granted in 1867. The men were happy with the writing machine, but Sholes kept tinkering with the keyboard. The keys kept jamming.

In the original design, the layout was in ABC fashion, but this system wasn’t working efficiently. One of the men’s investors recommended that his brother, an educator named Amos Densmore, conduct a study of letter pairings. Densmore showed Sholes how the keys arose when a person typed common words.

Based on Densmore’s information, Sholes created what we now know as the QWERTY keyboard. It is named for the placement of the first 6 letters on the top row of letters: QWERTY. With the keyboard changes, Sholes added them into a revised patent on the typewriter.

Anyone who has ever used a manual typewriter remembers that the keys do still jam occasionally, but the QWERTY layout permitted a better system for key usage. It also partially reduced the need for typists to stop to reach in to the machine to unjam the keys. (Sound familiar anyway?)

No Keys for Punctuation Marks

The original keyboard designed by Sholes lacked most punctuation marks. There were also no keys for zero or the number one. Typists learned “work-arounds” for these needs. A lower-case “l” was used for a one, and the letter “O” in uppercase was zero. An exclamation point could be made by using a three-stroke combination. The typist hit an apostrophe, a backspace and a period and an exclamation mark was formed. (The keys for M, C, and X were also in slightly different locations than today’s keyboards.)

Manufacturing Rights Sold

In 1873, the manufacturing rights to the “Sholes-Glidden Type Writer” were sold to E. Remington & Sons. At that time, the keyboard was slightly modified by the company’s own mechanical staff. It is believed that the final design was selected because the words TYPE WRITER can be written using just one row of the keyboard. This permitted salesmen to impress customers as they quickly pecked out “typewriter” on sales calls.

Competitive Typing

When typewriters were first invented, everyone typed via hunt-and-peck. As typewriters became popular, “touch typing”—a method for faster typing—began being taught. Soon speed typing contests were popular. A Salt Lake City court stenographer by the name of Frank Edgar McGurrin began winning typing contests. Through McGurrin’s continued success, his touch-typing method and the Remington keyboard layout he used gained popularity.

The Dvorak Keyboard

In 1936, August Dvorak (1894-1975), a psychologist and professor of education at the University of Washington, patented what became known as the Dvorak keyboard. The Dvorak permits users to type approximately 400 of the most common words in the English language with hands remaining on the home keys. This opened the opportunity for faster typing. (With QWERTY, one can type only 100 common words from the home keys.)

This brought up a new thought: Perhaps the time saved with the DVORAK keyboard would make it worthwhile for all typists to be re-trained.

Two business professors, Stan Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis, debunked that theory. Despite the fact that with QWERTY, “a” is under our weakest finger, and the most-used letter “e” is off the home row, people adapt. Those who are going to become fast typists will do so regardless of layout.

According to “Typing Errors,” an article co-authored by the two professors, there is no new system that would realize enough cost savings to merit the creation of a different keyboard. Given the number of additional years, we have now remained loyal to QWERTY, I wonder if they would feel differently!

So here we are. The basic keyboard design we use on our extraordinarily advanced technological gadgets was the result of the efficiency of mechanical typewriters used more than 100 years ago. Gotta love it.

 To read about the inventor of the correcting fluid for typists, read “Liquid Paper” for Typists Invented by Secretary.

Dr. Charles Drew was a pioneer in medicine who achieved recognition in a racially divided America for his work with blood collection and storage during World War II. But those who knew him said that his greatest pride was in having mentored many Black surgeons who might never have moved forward in the field of medicine if it hadn’t been for Dr. Drew.

Dr. Drew was one of several scientists working on ways to get blood to the battlefields. During World War I, many soldiers died because the only way blood could be transfused then was directly from the donor. Medical people needed effective ways to collect, store, and transport blood.

Among Dr. Drew’s many accomplishments with blood was finding a way to dry plasma, which lengthened its storage and shelf life. The plasma could then be reconstituted when needed. These and other discoveries saved thousands of lives during the war.

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The Drew Family

Charles Drew was one of four children born to middle-class parents. His father was a carpet-layer, and his mother trained as a teacher. The family lived in the Foggy Bottom section of northwest Washington, D.C. The neighborhood was interracial (though D.C. itself was segregated), so the Drews were aware of segregation but not always subjected to it.

As a boy, Charles Drew maintained a large paper route and later attended Dunbar High School, which was well-respected for offering opportunities to all. Drew was a gifted athlete, and he was offered an athletic scholarship by Amherst College (to be one of six Black students in a class of 600). He played on the football team and was asked to participate in track and field as well.  In his studies at Amherst, Drew became interested in science and medicine.

Medical School

During his senior year, Drew applied to the medical schools at Harvard, Howard University and McGill University in Canada. He lacked the required chemistry credits for Howard, and Harvard asked him to defer a year. (Most American colleges held only one spot for a Black student. Presumably, Harvard’s was filled.) However, McGill University, known to be more welcoming to Black students, accepted him for the upcoming year.

At McGill Medical School, Charles Drew excelled. He won the annual scholarship prize in neuroanatomy, was in the medical honor society, and qualified to be part of the staff of the McGill Medical Journal. In 1933, he graduated second in his class and received his M.D.C.M. degree (Doctor of Medicine and Master of Surgery).

Residency in Montreal

After McGill, Charles Drew accepted a residency at Montreal General Hospital. His mentor there was Dr. John Beattie, an anatomy professor who was conducting studies on blood transfusion and shock therapy. (No one then knew that a blood transfusion helped with treating someone in shock. This discovery would be vital during the war years.)

Scientists elsewhere were working on other necessities proven by World War I. They needed to find a way to manage blood so that it could be delivered to the battlefields. Up until the 1930s, blood transfusions needed to be given directly from donor to recipient and only among people with the same blood type.  

Work on Plasma and Storage

At Montreal Hospital, Doctors Beattie and Drew were making progress in two areas: plasma and blood storage.

Plasma is a clear yellow liquid containing proteins and electrolytes that carries blood cells and other substances through the body. Beattie and Drew’s laboratory was working on methods to separate the liquid part of the blood from the whole blood (where the red blood cells exist). 

In their work, they also realized that plasma was interchangeable with all blood types.  When a whole blood transfusion is unnecessary, a plasma transfusion could be administered, regardless of blood type. This was an extraordinary discovery.

During World War I, small quantities of blood could be stored briefly, but it required constant refrigeration. This was not easy during wartime.

Dr. Beattie’s and Dr. Drew’s experimentation with different types of blood products showed that when separated, blood plasma could be stored for a longer period of time than whole blood. There was also less risk of contamination.

Moving Back to the U.S.

After Dr. Drew finished his work under Dr. Beattie, he accepted a faculty position as a professor of surgery at the predominantly Black Howard University. After two years at Howard, he joined the staff of the Freedman’s Hospital, a federally-operated facility connected to Howard. He taught and performed surgeries.  

Fellowship at Columbia

In 1938, Charles Drew was awarded a two-year Rockefeller fellowship in surgery at Columbia University. As part of the fellowship, he worked at Presbyterian Hospital under eminent surgeon Allen Whipple. (Whipple was the first doctor to create a way to perform pancreatic cancer surgery.)

Drew’s graduate work at Columbia was a continuation of the work he had done on blood in Montreal. His doctoral thesis was “Banked Blood: A Study on Blood Preservation,” Among other information presented in the study, Dr. Drew showed that blood plasma could be preserved for two months. This was longer than the shelf life of whole blood.  He also proved that when dried, the plasma lasted even longer. Then when needed, the plasma could be reconstituted to its original form.

Based on his thesis, he was awarded a Doctor of Science in Medicine. He was the first Black man to receive this advanced degree from Columbia (1940).

In September of 1939, Drew married Minnie Lenore Robbins, a professor at Spelman College. They went on to have 4 children. (His children all excelled; one daughter became a neuroscientist.)

Recruited for Blood Bank

After obtaining his advanced degree, Charles Drew was recruited by transfusion specialist Dr. John Scudder who obtained funding to set up an experimental blood bank. Scudder was in talks with British doctors about how America’s findings about plasma could be put to work to help Britain. The country was seeing many injuries because of the Blitz (the German bombing of Britain in 1940-41.)

Scudder appointed Charles Drew as Supervisor of the Blood Transfusion Association for New York City where he also oversaw the Blood for Britain program.

The Challenge

When Drew stepped in, medical centers around the country were already attempting blood collection for the war, but each hospital collected the blood  differently and used their own methods for preservation. This meant that a good deal of blood could not be used, and the Blood for Britain program was in danger of failing.

Drew implemented methods for systematically collecting, treating, and storing the blood. Drawing on Drew’s research, scientists working on the project separated plasma, tested it, and then stored it. It was then bottled in 1-liter units and shipped to Britain by the Red Cross.

The new system was Immensely successful. Blood for Britain collected over 14,500 blood donations and sent 5000 liters of plasma to Britain.

Red Cross Undertakes Expansion of Blood Bank

After the success of Blood for Britain, the National Research Council and the American Red Cross planned a national blood donation and banking system. Charles Drew’s use of dried plasma was game-changing. The Red Cross offered him the job of organizing the blood program for the Red Cross.

As he had done before, Drew set up a system of uniform procedures and standards for collecting blood as well as packing it into kits where it could be sent to hospitals or directly to a battlefield. Dr. Drew also developed mobile blood donation stations (“bloodmobiles”).

The Question of “Mixing”

The scientists working with blood knew that all people produce the same kind of blood. However, an outside group decided that blood should not be mixed: a white person needing blood must not be given blood from a Black person.

As the Red Cross moved through the stresses of war on behalf of the military, the Army and the Red Cross decided the correct action was to forbid Blacks from donating blood. They disregarded the growing need for donated blood, and disregarded the fact that Blacks were now serving on or near battlefields. What would happen if one of them needed blood?

After the Red Cross announced that Blacks would not be permitted to donate blood, there was an overwhelming outcry of protest. The Red Cross back-tracked and concluded that blood should be segregated. White donated blood would be given to white people; Black soldiers would be given blood donated by Blacks.

And there the matter rested for a time.

Dr. Drew Moves On

After six months with the Red Cross, Dr. Drew returned to Howard University. Some wrote that the decision about segregating the blood was the factor that led to his decision, but historian Spencie Love, author of One Blood: The Death and Resurrection of Charles R. Drew (1996), combed through massive amounts of research pertaining to Dr. Drew. She wrote there was no indication as to that being the cause.

The work Dr. Drew loved was surgery and teaching. It was fitting that after getting a program up and running, Drew would want to return to Howard’s Medical Program.  In the 1940s,  few hospitals accepted Black students for residencies. (Drew himself was turned down by Mayo Clinic because he was Black.)  Returning to Howard to mentor incoming doctors was his top priority.

Drew Takes a Stand on Blood Segregation

But Charles Drew most certainly had an opinion about “mixing” blood, based on his scientific research. In 1942, he wrote: “As you know, there is no scientific basis for the separation of the bloods of different races except on the basis of the individual blood types or groups.”

Two years later in a letter to the director of the Federal Labor Standards Association, he was more blunt about blood separation in the National Blood Bank: “I think the Army made a grievous mistake, a stupid error in first issuing an order to the effect that blood for the Army should not be received from Negroes. It was a bad mistake for 3 reasons: (1) No official department of the Federal Government should willfully humiliate its citizens; (2) There is no scientific basis for the order; and (3) They need the blood.”

Return to Howard

With Drew’s return to Howard in 1941, he served for the next nine years as the Chief of Surgery at Freedman’s Hospital.  For him, the mission to train the next generation was of utmost importance. At the time of Charles Richard Drew’s death in 1950, nearly half the Black physicians in the country had gotten their start because of Dr. Drew. 

Other achievements while at Freedman’s Hospital included a shared patent for an intravenous surgical needle for blood delivery (1943; Patent # 2,389,355.) In 2015, Drew was admitted posthumously  to the National Inventors Hall of Fame.  

The Death of Charles Drew and the Ongoing Controversy

On April 1, 1950, Dr. Charles Drew died in a one-car crash in Almance County, North Carolina. He was traveling with three other doctors on the way to a medical conference in Tuskegee, Alabama. Drew had suggested driving as he knew that two of the doctors couldn’t afford plane fare.

On March 31, Drew worked a full day at Freedman’s Hospital including presenting a lecture that evening. After the lecture, he did his final hospital rounds and then went to meet the other doctors so they could leave that night.

One of the other doctors took the first stint driving, but about 5 a.m., they crossed the Virginia-North Carolina border and stopped to have something to eat. They also changed drivers. Dr. Drew took the wheel. He and the other doctors must have all dozed off.  Suddenly, the right wheels of the car hit the shoulder of the road, waking them. Drew instinctively pulled on the wheel to turn the car sharply left. This caused the car to roll over.

The Crash

On the driver’s side, the car doors snapped open. Cars then had no seatbelts, so both Dr. Drew and his colleague Dr. Ford were thrown from the car.

Dr. Ford broke several bones and suffered cuts and a bad gash to his leg, but he was thrown clear. The car rolled over Charles Drew, causing multiple injuries to his chest and head.

The two shaken but uninjured doctors got up to assess their friends’ situation. Neighbors who heard the crash called an ambulance. Before long, a highway patrol officer showed up.

The ambulance arrived within about 15 minutes. The emergency responders put Dr. Drew on a stretcher, and one of the unhurt doctors climbed into the ambulance to accompany him to the hospital.

Where the Accident Occurred

The car crash happened in Almance County, a county with a small population that was both mixed and segregated.  Almance General Hospital was the only medical facility in the county. It was a small privately-owned hospital that would have been intended for the white population. In 1948, an emergency room was added but given the size of the county, it was minimally supplied.

Anyone requiring advanced care and deemed healthy enough for the trip would have been sent on to the hospital at Duke University. There was also a Black Hospital elsewhere where patients were sometimes sent.

Bringing Dr. Drew to Almance

Dr. Drew is described as light-skinned, so the ambulance drivers may have assumed he was white, or they may simply evaluated the emergency and realized they had to get help as quickly as possible.

At any rate, Drew was taken to Almance Hospital, and Dr. Ford, who was also hurt, was taken there, too. A passing motorist stopped and offered to take him since there wasn’t room in the ambulance.

Dr. George Carrington was one of several doctors who owned Almance. A crash of this type created news immediately, so when Drew and Ford were brought into the hospital, Dr. Carrington came out to see who was going on.

After only a moment of seeing the man on the stretcher, he said. “Is that Dr. Drew?”

The Almance doctor on assignment for emergency cases that morning was Harold Kernodle Sr., an orthopedic surgeon whose brother also worked there.  The doctors saw that Drew needed immediate attention. Both Kernodles as well as Carrington and another doctor, Ralph Brooks, stepped in and out of the room where Drew was being treated. They started fluids, including plasma on him, but the injuries were too serious. He died within an hour.

Dr. Ford’s Injuries

In the meantime, Dr. Ford’s broken arm and other bones were set. The bad gash on his leg was sewn up, and he was taken to the basement where there were four beds dedicated to Black patients. (This was customary in the South. A certain number of beds were dedicated to the Black population. If those beds were taken, future patients were turned away.)

Dr. Drew’s Family

When Dr. Drew’s wife was notified of his death, she was told of what happened and the treatment he was given.  Later, she sent thank you notes to the staff of the hospital for doing what they could to save her young husband. 

Rumors Began Shortly

Within weeks, rumors began to spread in the community and among the medical conference attendees where Dr. Drew was to speak. There were various forms of the story:

• “The man who created the blood bank system for the United States and Britain was taken to a white hospital where he was refused a badly-needed transfusion and died.”
• “Dr. Drew was injured and taken to a white hospital where he was turned away.”
• “They refused to give him blood, and he died.”

The rumors spread for so many months that it became the “myth of Dr. Drew’s death.” But historian Spencie Love tracked carefully through all available information for her book, “One Blood.” She went through papers, viewed hospital records, and spoke to family members as well as the colleagues traveling with Dr. Drew. They were all in agreement—regardless of what the rumors were, Dr. Charles Drew received the appropriate medical treatment following a very serious accident.

From the time of the accident, Drew family members and his colleagues devoted time to right the wrong perception of Drew’s care, but nothing worked. The story continued.

Becomes Legend

Love writes that fourteen years later (1964), Whitney Young (1921-1971), the national director of the Urban League, wrote that Drew was denied care. He expanded on this information in newspaper columns and speeches. Whitney Young was highly esteemed and people believed he had to be right.

As historian Love worked to unravel the persistence of the untruth, she writes that the legend served a purpose. Just as family stories (and fairy tales) are told and re-told for a reason, so, too, was the legend of Dr. Drew’s death.

To prove her point, Love went out to learn more about what happened to other Black patients in the South.

Black Health Care in the South

In her research, Spencie Love documented that Drew and Ford were fortunate. In the South, it was customary to send Black patients away from white hospitals. Of course, the Black hospitals were often several hours away and were less well-equipped.

To provide a concrete example, Love details the story of Maltheus Avery, a Black man who was a veteran of World War II and was supporting a young family while traveling back and forth to a college that was an hour away. Avery, too, had a car accident on this stretch of the highway. An ambulance picked him up and rushed him to Almance Hospital. The doctors there saw that the Avery’s injury was to the head, and they sent him on to Duke University where they had expertise in these types of wounds.

But when the ambulance arrived at Duke, all the beds allotted for Black patients were filled. The Duke doctors turned him away, saying he belonged at the Black Hospital, where of course, they didn’t have the necessary expertise. But it didn’t matter. Avery died en route.

Another Chilling Story

One other bone-chilling story is worth sharing. Two brothers were at home working on a science experiment to present at school the next day. Something went wrong. An explosion went off in the face of one of the boys. Their father put the family in the car and drove to the nearest hospital. But they were Black, and the hospital refused to help them. Tears streamed down the father’s face, as he begged them to help his son. They refused, and the boy was blinded by the accident.

 Would more rapid treatment care have changed this boy’s fate? That family will never know.

Legends Exist for a Reason

As historian Love writes, rumors/myths/legends exist for a reason. While Dr. Charles Drew may have received the best care possible, far too many Blacks have always known they would never receive proper health care– from slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and beyond.

Even today, the statistics for the health of people of color are generally much worse than for the white population. According to the Office of Minority Health, (part of the Department for Health and Human Services) Black people are at higher risk for heart disease, stroke, cancer, asthma, influenza and pneumonia, diabetes, HIV/Aids and Covid.

Some Medical Devices not Color Neutral

In further illustration of this point, The Los Angeles Times (February 20, 2024) wrote about how the medical establishment was only now admitting the misinformation provided by pulse oximeters, which are widely used for initial screening for Covid.  Black people often register that their blood oxygen is acceptable with a pulse oximeter, when actually their oxygen level is dangerously low.

Skin pigmentation seems to interfere with proper reading, and thousands died of Covid when they might have been saved.

So What about Dr. Drew?

Is the story about Dr. Drew’s death true? According to sources, it is not. However, the disparity between the health care for Black vs. white people is still very much an issue. While Black people are no longer sent off to a “Black hospital,” they may wait longer to be seen in a crowded neighborhood emergency room where there is inadequate staffing or a dearth of medical supplies. Black women have long said that their health issues are taken less seriously by the medical establishments. The disparity between successful Black births vs. white births bears this out.  See Midwife in Georgia Improved Birth Rates for Black Women.

For that reason, it is understandable that the legend is still repeated even now. It serves a purpose to remind people that this issue is serious indeed.

Dr. Drew’s Legacy

Charles Drew broke barriers in a racially divided country to become one of most important scientists in the country. His work relating to blood banks and blood transfusions was groundbreaking and saved thousands of lives. His mentorship to Black doctors increased the odds that there would be more doctors available to help people get the care they deserve.

He received many honors. The Springarn Medal was awarded to him in 1944 by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. (The Springarn Medal was established in 1914 to be given annually to recognize great achievements by African Americans.

Many schools and medical departments and health facilities have been named in his memory, and there were numerous other honors as well. In 1976, the National Park Service designated the Charles Richard Drew house in Arlington County, Virginia, a National Historic Landmark. In 1981, the United States Postal Service created a 35-cent stamp with Charles Drew’s likeness on it.

There is a Charles Richard Drew Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C. and a park in Montreal named for him. His name is often on several lists of 100 Greatest African Americans.

***

My father was badly injured in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. I have little doubt that Dr. Drew’s work helped my family.

Life preservers are something we take for granted. We know they are important for boating and swimming, and we’ve all sat through airplane evacuation preparations, so we know that a life preserver will be there if we need it.

These safety devices became well-known during World War II when they made the difference between life and death for thousands of sailors and airmen.

During that era, they acquired the name “Mae West jackets.” When a person puts one on and inflates it, he or she look like a buxom woman. In the 1940s, this reminded men of Mae West.

Here’s how the life preserver came to be.

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Sporting Good Store Owner Developed Idea

When these life preservers were first designed, the inventor never imagined they would become such an important part of our lives. Peter Markus (1875-1973) was trying to create a life vest to save boaters and fly fishermen who bought supplies at his sporting goods store.

Markus lived in Minnesota and ran a healthy business selling supplies to boaters and fishermen. Weekend visitors and full-time residents stopped by the store for equipment. Markus always urged them to buy and wear a life vest. He read the local headlines. He knew how many people drowned when they got knocked overboard on a boat or swept along by a strong current when fly fishing.

But he understood the resistance. He was a fisherman himself. At that time, the buoyancy of safety vests came from cork filling. The cork vests would help keep a person afloat, but they were bulky and awkward to wear.

Markus knew that if a fisherman was casting a line, the cork vest was very likely to be in in his way. He agreed. These vests were bothersome.

How To Make a Better Vest

Markus began experimenting with how to create a life vest that would be more comfortable to wear. Using a man’s vest as his basic pattern, he worked with different types of material that could be inflated. He finally selected a rubberized cloth, styling the vest with air pockets in the front. The vest itself slipped over a person’s head and straps wrapped around the wearer to keep the vest securely in place.

When it was deflated it weighed under two pounds and was comfortable to wear. 

Markus knew he needed a way for the user to inflate the vest quickly. He came up with a system that used two small cartridges of fluid carbon dioxide. Each was connected to a cord on either side of the vest. When the wearer needed to inflate the vest, he or she pulled the cords. This triggered the fluid and caused carbon dioxide gas to fill up the vest’s air pockets.

Markus developed his invention in the 1920s and received a patent on it in 1928. In 1930 and 1931, he patented additional minor changes to the vest.

Manufacturing the Vest

As a store owner, Peter Markus had no interest in running a factory to create these vests. Instead, he contacted a rubber company with which he did business to see if they would make the vests. He showed them what he had in mind. They agreed to a partnership. They would manufacture the life preservers, and Markus would be paid royalties for the design of the preserver and for marketing the vests at sporting goods conventions.

Markus began traveling the country to visit trade shows. He rented booths so that he could demonstrate the life vest to convention attendees, most of whom were sportsmen themselves. They understood the value of what Markus created and sales were good.

In the 1930s, a Navy captain saw Peter Markus demonstrating the life vest. For the captain, this was a “light bulb” moment. He realized the value the preserver could have for the military. 

Markus was invited to come to Washington to demonstrate the life preserver.

Military Recognizes the Value

Like the sportsmen whom Markus knew, the military primarily used life vests filled with cork or balsa wood. The military and the fishermen were in agreement—those vests were bulky and hard to wear.

When the military purchasing agents saw Markus demonstrate his inflatable vest, they were delighted. They asked for only one change—that of color. The military pointed out that if an airman or a sailor went into the water, a bright orange color would make them easier for rescuers to see. After that adjustment, the government was ready to buy.

The vests soon made headlines.  In 1935, the dirigible, the USS Macon, went down in the Pacific. There were one hundred crewmen on board. An astonishing 98 of the craft’s crew were saved because they were wearing vests. The two who died were also wearing vests but they became entangled in the crash debris and there was no way to free the men in time. 

Shortly after the newspaper articles, Markus began receiving letters from appreciative airmen.

Congress Rules on “Excess Profits”

During the war, Congress passed an “Excess Profits” tax on company earnings from sales made to the military during wartime.

In support of the government, Markus cancelled his patent rights for war time and the future. From that date forward, the vests were available to the government royalty-free. According to the inventor’s son, Alvin A. Markus, his father “was happy his ingenuity helped save lives.”

Mae West Name Chosen By Military Men

Because the front air pockets filled quite completely, the wearer then had the look of a buxom woman. The World War II men who wore these began to call them the Mae West.

Though the vests were quite reliable, military men with idle time sometimes caused the devices to fail. Author Laura Hillenbrand explains what sometimes happened in Unbroken, the story of Pacific airman Louis Zamperini (1917-2013) during World War II. Zamperini told her that valuable as the vests were, the men sometimes tampered with them. If they removed the carbon dioxide cartridges, they could carbonate their drinks.

 Any soldier will say that wars are terrifying—and boring. Clearly, this is one of the things they did during the boring parts, unfortunately.

Still Saving Lives

Today the military still uses a form of this life vest, and the life preserver provided for commercial airline travelers is based on this “Mae West” model.

Like all inventions, other people come along and make improvements, but thus far, the Mae West life preserver remains very similar to the one Peter Markus thought of a century ago.

The first parking meters in the United States went into use in Oklahoma City in 1935.

The city grew rapidly in the early 20^th century. In 1913, the city had only 3000 drivers, but as people traded in their horses and wagons and bought cars, the numbers grew. By 1930, five hundred thousand cars were registered within the county.

Oklahomans who worked downtown arrived early and took the most convenient street parking for themselves, leaving their cars in one spot all day. As a result, shoppers had difficulty finding places to park.

Like other towns addressing this problem, Oklahoma City tried to control this by marking tires with chalk, Cars that were left in the same space for too long were ticketed. But that was time-intensive and took policemen off their regular beats.

A better solution was needed. That’s how the parking meter came about. (To see a video on the topic scroll to the bottom of the post.)

First Patent

Though the first parking meters were used in Oklahoma City, the first patent for this type of device came from a fellow in the Boston area. Roger W. Babson, who went on to found Babson College, received a patent on his parking timer in 1928. However, Babson’s attention must have been diverted by other issues as he never got around to manufacturing the device.

Carl C. Magee, an Oklahoma newspaperman, was the second person to receive a patent for a parking meter.  But his path to becoming an inventor was circuitous. Magee worked as a newspaperman in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he made important headway on a national story—the bribery scandal involving the Warren Harding administration (known as the Teapot Dome Scandal.)  

Since he made a name for himself in Albuquerque, Magee might have continued to live and work in New Mexico if it hadn’t been for an unfortunate incident. As a reporter, Magee’s stories sometimes angered readers. One day he was walking through a hotel lobby when a man approached and tried to knock him down. Magee pulled out his revolver and fired. Though he intended to shoot at the man who attacked him, he missed and hit a bystander.

The case went to court where a judge acquitted Magee of manslaughter. He was greatly relieved but felt it was time for a fresh start.  In 1927, he moved to Oklahoma City to publish his own newspaper, the Oklahoma News.

As he settled into his new home, Magee became involved in community activities. He was soon appointed chair of the Oklahoma traffic committee. In the meetings, he heard many stories about the city’s problems with traffic congestion as well as parking difficulties faced by shoppers.

Magee Worked On Idea

Magee had an idea for a way to control parking and tinkered with what he thought might be a workable parking timer. In 1932, he built a crude model of a windable device that would establish time limits on parking. As he studied his creation, he knew he needed help from someone with an engineering background.

Carl Magee consulted men from the engineering department at the University of Oklahoma. The professors and Magee all had workloads of their own, so Magee suggested a contest to encourage ideas from students.

The device needed to be easy for consumers to understand and use. It also needed to be weatherproof and safe from vandalism. In 1933, Magee offered a $160 prize for the best design for such a device. A separate award of $240 was offered for a working model of a device.  

But because Carl Magee had a pre-conceived idea of what might work, he quickly saw that the ideas from students weren’t practical.

He returned to the engineering professors, Gerald Hale and Professor H. G. Thuesen. The men tinkered with Magee’s basic idea and came up with what they called the “Black Maria.” 

What Were the First Meters Like?

The first design—the “Black Maria”—worked like a wind-up clock. The car driver put the specified coin (a nickel in the beginning) into the machine and twisted a knob on the meter. The coin dropped in and an hour of parking time showed through the face of the meter.  When the paid-for time elapsed, a flag popped up to indicate that the time expired.

Once a week a city employee walked the route where there were parking meters. Each meter needed to be wound individually in order to function for the following week.

A year later, another Oklahoma City fellow patented his own design for a parking meter. Percy C. Gumm called his company, the Park-O-Later. His device had an hourglass embedded in the mechanism. When the coin dropped into the meter, the hourglass turned over and started timing 60 minutes.

“The device needs to be easy to use and safe from vandalism.”

Carl C. Magee, Inventor

Who Will Make Them?

But Carl Magee, as head of the traffic committee, was able to reach city administrators and get his invention approved more rapidly. He filed for a patent (received in 1938). Then once he got the go-ahead from the city, he organized a consortium of local businessmen to put up money for manufacturing.  They soon incorporated as the Dual Parking Meter Company, later known as the Magee-Hale Park-O-Meter Company.

To manufacture the meter, they turned to the MacNick Company in Tulsa.  MacNick made timing devices used to explode nitroglycerin in oil wells. (The explosion increased the flow of oil or gas as it was coming out.)

Soon MacNick was also manufacturing parking meters.

Public Reaction

On July 16, 1935, 175 meters were installed along fourteen blocks in Oklahoma City.

There were definitely complaints. Drivers felt it was a tax on their right to own an automobile. A few filed lawsuits.

Others decided to make a “day” of the event.  One fellow rode his horse into town, paid a nickel, and tied the horse to the parking meter pole. Four other people arrived with folding chairs and a card table. They set up the table up in the parking space, paid the nickel, and proceeded to enjoy a one-hour bridge game.

When the “meter movement” spread to Sequoyah County, Oklahoma, a lumber company owner wrote in about the parking problem. After stating his belief that the meters were a nuisance, he quotes Englishman Edmund Burke: “The question with me is not whether you have the right to render your people miserable, but whether it is not to your interest to make them happy.”

But despite being irritated, drivers quickly adapted. They discovered that if they were willing to pay a nickel, they could actually find parking. Storekeepers were happy when they saw that customers could shop more easily.

City officials were pleased that fewer cars had to drive around the streets looking for parking, and they also appreciated the revenue. While only a trickle of money came from the parking meter charges, the unpaid parking tickets began to add up to some decent money.

Who Received the First Parking Ticket?

In August of 1935, Reverend C. H. North of Oklahoma City received the first parking ticket ever issued. The new meters were only in place for about a month, so people were probably not in the habit of paying attention to needing to “feed” a meter. 

What’s more, North was a minister. He argued in court that he had stopped for only a minute to run into a store and get change.  The judge kindly dismissed his case.

Other Cities Followed

As a result, parking meters were an invention that were soon being used in cities across the nation. By the early 1940s, there were more than 140,000 parking meters across the U.S. Magee-Hale, Dual Parking Meter Co, Mark-Time, and Duncan Miller were all manufacturing them.

Surprisingly, meters were not introduced in New York City until 1951. Perhaps people were taking public transportation.

Manufacturers Entered the Market

Other companies besides the Dual Park-O-Meter company in Oklahoma City began manufacturing parking meters. The Mark-Time Parking Meter Company operated from Hartford, Connecticut. This company improved on Magee’s design because the Mark-Time meters could absorb the power they needed through the winding done by the driver. (No weekly winding by a serviceman was required.)

For the next 40-50 years, not much changed in parking meter design. Manufacturers created the two-headed model so that cities could monitor two parking places with the installation one pole with a dual meter attached.

Parking Meters Today

Many advances have been made as to how parking meters work. Most meters are now digital, making them easier to monitor and service from a central location.

Those that are still mounted on poles along streets usually take credit cards as well as coins. Many towns also have multispacer meters. Within a large parking lot, there will be one machine where drivers go to pay for parking. They then receive a “paid” ticket that they may have to display on their dashboard.

Today many cities have parking meter apps. Once you find a parking space in one of the “app zones,” you enter the number where you are parking, specify the time you need for parking, and pay through your phone. The app will remind you near the time of expiration. You can also extend time via the app. Some apps also let you reserve a space. This is helpful particularly if you are attending a major event.

Though Magee’s original device changed greatly, there is still a strong need for regulating parking. For that reason, parking meters will continue to exist for a long time.

Meter Maids

Parking tickets were initially given out by police officers. Towns found there were two problems with this—the responsibility took police away from more important tasks, and with a mostly-male police force, angry drivers were more likely to punch or scream at the officers. 

New York was the first city to decide to have specialized employees. They also made the specific decision to hire women for the job, thinking that drivers might then “mind their manners.” With this, the job of “meter maid” was born. (In some cities like Las Vegas, the city administrators decided that scantily clad women would be less likely to be punched or knocked down. Today the “uniforms” these women were forced to wear would not be well received.)

Meter Maids in Grand Junction

In 1974, the Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, Colorado, printed an article about a meter maid’s day. At that time, the town had two meter maids, so the streets were divided into two districts.

When the women arrived at the precinct, they prepared the top portion of several tickets. That way, if a driver arrived when a ticket was being written, the meter maid was well on her way to completing the ticket. This made it harder to argue with the women. The women averaged 60-70 tickets each day.

In most towns, meter maids were courteous and could offer directions or answer questions about the town. Grand Junction took this role an extra mile. If an out-of-town car was parked illegally or in an expired meter, the meter maid left a note that began, “Welcome neighbor.” The page then listed some of the top visitor attractions in Grand Junction.

The final paragraph read: By the way, your meter has expired, but we’ll forgive you this time.”  Visitors reacted positively to this, but if the same car was found at an expired meter more than once, a real ticket was issued.

The Story Told Simply