Richard Hollingshead, a sales manager at his dad’s Whiz Auto Products, was doing quite well for himself but felt no challenge. He wanted to create something that never existed before, something that could help motorist moviegoers and create a new trend all at once. Regular movie theaters played matinees for children in the afternoons and reserved evenings and weekends for their parents, with the two rarely attending together. The theater locations, too, often left little room for parking. Hollingshead thought he might be able to solve both problems by opening an outdoor movie theater people could watch from their cars.

On this day, June 6, in 1933, the first drive-in opened on Crescent Boulevard in Hollingshead’s hometown of Camden, New Jersey. Admission was 25 cents per car, and 25 more per each car occupant.

Hollingshead did more than just attach a projector screen outside and and invite drivers over. He experimented with outdoor sound projection, taking into account all weather conditions, even rain. Through experiments he also calculated out the ideal distance between car rows, so that each would have an unobstructed view. His stadium-seating system for cars was the first patent for a drive-in theater.