Here’s how it works: The customer leaves their car in an entrance lane. The attendant then presses a button which sends a 22-foot steel dolly on rubber tires under the automobile. The dolly moves along an angle-steel guide, propelled by a three-horsepower electric motor. When the dolly is directly under the car, another motor swings two metal arms from a horizontal to a vertical position. From either end of the car these arms move toward each other until they press the car’s bumpers. Pressure against the bumpers starts the motor again, and the dolly rolls the car along the track and onto an elevator.

The attendant, noting from green lights on a 72-button control board, presses a button to instruct the mechanism as to where the car is to be parked. The elevator moves up to the proper floor and the dolly rolls the car into the designated stall. When the owner calls for his car, the attendant presses the proper button and the dolly rushes off to the desired car, whisks it down on the elevator and delivers it to the owner. The attendant can deliver any car in the building within one minute.

From the point of view of an inventor, these robotic towers and mechanical parking systems were a marvellous solution to the growing car problem in cities. However, regardless of how fast they were, the waiting and maintenance of these systems started to create a new set of problems for the already complicated issue of parking and retrieving ones car. It could be said that the solution to one car problem led to another problem entirely.