When Were License Plates Invented?

They take up a small portion of a car’s exterior, easily overlooked when next to sleek curves, bright lights and colorful bumper stickers. Yet, license plates are an indispensable part of the driving experience, as anyone who attempts to bypass their installation is sure to learn from an observant police officer.

Created for functional purposes, license plates have also become a means by which drivers can display their personality or support their favorite cause. Even standard designs feature artistic flourishes that change over the decades.

The multitude of varieties spawned the launch of the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association (ALPCA) in 1954 and, more recently, the creation of the nonprofit Vehicle Registration History Center (VRHC) to document the lifespan of these understated but essential car components.

Numbered metal tags were displayed on London’s taxicabs and horse-drawn carriages for hire as far back as 1831, according to collector and VRHC co-founder Eric Tanner’s website All About License Plates. With the arrival of motor vehicles toward the end of the 19th century, municipalities began seeing a greater need to register and monitor these speedy, disruptive machines.

“When cities began to see that there was damage to the roads, people were getting freaked out” by cars, says Jeff Minard, an ALPCA member and VRHC co-founder. “They’re causing a disturbance... They’re bothering the police horses.”

As public interest in the identity of drivers grew, so did calls for vehicle registration—typically for a fee. Because the well-maintained roads of city parks proved an irresistible draw to car owners, park boards of major metropolitan areas took the early lead in regulating vehicles. Tanner, who is also editor of ALPCA’s Plates Magazine, traces the first motor vehicle registration in the United States to a permit the Boston Park Commission issued in 1898. He reports Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park Commission distributed the country’s first license plates—in the form of leather tags—in 1900.

On April 25, 1901, New York Governor Benjamin Odell Jr. signed a bill that required the motor vehicle registration and for vehicles to display “the separate initials of the owner’s name placed upon the back thereof in a conspicuous place, the letters forming such initials to be at least three inches in height.” Thus marked the beginning of state-mandated license plates throughout the country, even if this particular law didn’t specify anything about a “plate.” Some owners simply painted their initials in a prominent spot on their vehicles. Many others preferred not to mark up their expensive new toys and instead satisfied the legal requirements with the installation of a wood or leather tag.

In June 1903, Massachusetts became the first state to issue manufactured license plates using iron and porcelain enamel. Recognizing the limitations of delineating a rapidly growing populace of car owners by initials, the state instead printed white numbers on its dark blue plates, with No. 1 going to a well-connected car enthusiast named Frederick Tudor.

The next 15 years produced a mishmash of city and state laws governing the distribution of license plates, with cars featuring either the self-made leather and wood varieties or official state-issued versions of porcelain and later embossed steel. However, according to ALPCA member and VRHC co-founder Rich Dragon, the process became relatively streamlined as states took control of oversight to eliminate local ordinances and homemade efforts. State governments began requiring annual renewals for a corresponding fee, and some issued new plates for vehicles each year. States also forged reciprocity agreements that allowed cars to cross state lines without the need to affix different plates.

“[The] foundational characteristics of our modern registration system, they were developed during [this] period,” Dragon says. As of January 1, 1918, all 48 states had adopted statewide registration laws. Although many improvements have been made to license plates and registration systems over the past 100-plus years, these basic attributes remain unchanged.

Over the next two decades, most of the notable changes to license plates were of the aesthetic variety. Arizona had been the first state to incorporate a purely decorative element in 1917 with the depiction of a steer’s head to promote its beef industry. Idaho took a page from that marketing ploy to trumpet its potatoes with the outline of a spud beginning in 1928. And while influential individuals had long been able to secure preferred numbers and letters to mark their cars, average folks in Connecticut got the same chance when the state introduced the first vanity plates in 1937.

The arrival of World War II brought a more serious overhaul to the industry as Uncle Sam commandeered much of the steel that had gone toward license plate production for the war effort. Some states responded by shrinking the size of their plates. Many others began distributing metal tabs with years printed on them to eliminate the need to continuously churn out new plates.

“Tabs are essentially a metal equivalent of a sticker, so it’s like a little tiny license plate that you bolt onto your plate,” Dragon explains. “You rivet it on there…and it shows that you’ve paid the fee for the next year.”

Other states eschewed metal altogether and experimented with plates made from cardboard, sugarcane or soybeans, though the latter reportedly drew some nibbles from hungry barnyard animals.

Overshadowed by the metal conservation strategies of the war years was the emergence of reflective technology to help foster safer nighttime driving. Georgia had some success in this endeavor by producing plates embedded with tiny glass beads in 1941. A bigger breakthrough came with reflective plastic sheeting such as 3M’s Scotchlite material. It first appeared on Connecticut license plates in the ’40s and eventually was adopted by all states.

Along with featuring varying colors, slogans and other pictorial elements, license plates around the United States came in differing sizes through the first half of the 20th century. However, that changed in 1956 with the introduction of a fixed dimension of 12 by 6 inches.

“Size standardization was solely the effort of the [American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators] which aimed to develop a uniform size and shape so that car manufacturers could design auto bodies more efficiently to accommodate them, especially with recessed mountings and lighting for the rear plate,” Tanner explains. “Their campaign started in 1953 and achieved final compliance by October 1957, with most states and provinces switching in 1956 or 1957.”

More visual changes arrived in the 1970s as advances in screen printing made the graphical enhancement of plates easier for manufacturers. This technique first debuted on a South Dakota license plate featuring Mount Rushmore’s outline in 1974. An explosion of colorful screen-printed models soon followed, with states churning out swarms of bicentennial-themed plates.

Improved printing capabilities combined with an increasing demand for personalization fueled the rise of specialty plates that mark membership in an organization or devotion to a particular cause. The first widely popular specialty plate debuted in January 1987 in commemoration of the previous year’s space shuttle Challenger tragedy. By 2023, drivers had the option to choose from more than 8,000 such plates across the country, reflecting professional standing, support of a charity or a team fandom.

The turn of the century brought more developments that threatened to end longstanding practices in the industry. Some states turned to mass producing flat aluminum plates after decades of embossed versions to speed production. Even more disruptive was the inevitable arrival of electronic license plates.

Introduced in California in 2018, the first generation of wireless LTE-powered license plates were displayed on monochromatic digital ink screens. Although these plates offered the ability to quickly renew registrations and even the promise of advertising revenue for those willing to negotiate with local businesses, they also came with a hefty price tag, suggesting that it might take some time before drivers give up old metal markers for good.