Vertical Parking

A new Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. device last week proved the Pittsburgh aphorism that, when Necessity mothers Invention at Westinghouse, the labor is slight. A company engineer goes to work and by & by the requirement is filled. Last week's device was a machine for parking motorcars in a stack. The inventor was Henry Duvall James, 56, consulting engineer. The necessity was finding parking space for the company's Pittsburgh employes.

Mr. James's machine, ready for sale last week, is an endless conveyor set on end. The motorist runs his car into a cage. Gates shut and electricity raises the cage notch by notch until another cage reaches the street level. The present parker holds 24 cars in a double stack reaching, with motors and hoisting wheels, 100 ft. high. Ground space is 16 x 24 ft., approximately the size of a double garage.

When a motorist wants his car back he turns a key, presses a button or drops a coin, according to the parker's electric control arrangement. Thereupon the cage containing his car drops to street level, the car rolls out, much like a "hot dog" rolling out of a roasting machine in a roadside rotisserie.

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