Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum here. Back in the year nineteen hundred, there
Speaker 1: were just four thousand, one hundred and ninety two motor
Speaker 1: vehicles in the United States, but every year the number
Speaker 1: of cars skyrocketed. By nineteen oh eight, it was sixty
Speaker 1: three thousand, five hundred. As of twenty twenty one, it
Speaker 1: was some two hundred and eighty two million. As automobiles
Speaker 1: grew in popularity, eventually replacing the horse and buggy, state
Speaker 1: governments needed a way to keep tabs on vehicles and
Speaker 1: their owners. The simple license plate was the solution for
Speaker 1: the article. This episode is based on How Stuffworks. Spoke
Speaker 1: via email with Ian Lang, a senior car advice editor
Speaker 1: at the online car resource bumper dot com. He explained
Speaker 1: New York became the first state to require owners to
Speaker 1: register their motor vehicles with the state. The New York
Speaker 1: legislature required vehicle registration on April twenty fifth of nineteen
Speaker 1: oh one, followed by California later that year. It was
Speaker 1: Massachusetts that actually issued its first license plates in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh three. New York's first plates were homemade, bearing only
Speaker 1: the owner's initials without any numbers, and France actually beat
Speaker 1: all of them to the punch, with motor vehicle tags
Speaker 1: issued as early as eighteen ninety three. In fact, all
Speaker 1: the way back in seventeen eighty three, King Louis the
Speaker 1: sixteenth mandated that carriage drivers in Paris have metal plates
Speaker 1: with their names and addresses fixed on their carriages. Lang
Speaker 1: said by nineteen eighteen, license plates had been issued by
Speaker 1: all forty eight contiguous states. It was common for early
Speaker 1: plates to have just the state's name or abbreviation, a
Speaker 1: registration number, and more often than not, the year. These
Speaker 1: plates were made out of either leather or metal and
Speaker 1: were not very standardized from state to state. Some of
Speaker 1: these have become collector's items. In August of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: the very first license plate issued in Illinois went up
Speaker 1: for auction, fetching a whopping price of thirty four thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: The plate was supplied by the local government of Chicago
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh four and fittingly bears the number one
Speaker 1: in a bold font. Initially, license plates were issued to
Speaker 1: last the life of the vehicle, but by the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: registration renewal became a thing Lang said. During this time,
Speaker 1: states began experimenting with different methods of creating license plates. Typically,
Speaker 1: the front of the registration card plate would have the
Speaker 1: registration number in large, centered numbers, while the back would
Speaker 1: have the abbreviated name of the state and a two
Speaker 1: or four digit year of validity. Around the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: license plate size and materials began to be standardized to
Speaker 1: what we see today. After nineteen fifty six, all American
Speaker 1: as well as Canadian plates measured exactly six by twelve
Speaker 1: inches that's fifteen by thirty centimeters. In nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: the Vehicle Identification number or VIN was also introduced as
Speaker 1: a reliable method of tying registration documents to a particular car.
Speaker 1: So what do the numbers unlicensed plates mean today? US
Speaker 1: states use many different conventions when it comes to assigning
Speaker 1: plate numbers, and many states do it randomly. Others, like Idaho,
Speaker 1: designate numbers and letters based on the county where the
Speaker 1: plates are issued. The digits in letters are usually embossed
Speaker 1: and painted, though some states have moved toward completely flat
Speaker 1: metal plates. Each state offers designs with local slogans or
Speaker 1: symbols serving as the backdrop, perhaps a local plant, a
Speaker 1: famous landmark, or a historical figure. Some states require tags
Speaker 1: at both the front and rear of the vehicle, while
Speaker 1: others issue only the rear plate. And of course, there
Speaker 1: are also plenty of custos vanity plate options that allow
Speaker 1: drivers to pick designs that are meaningful to them and
Speaker 1: to choose their own characters that create words or phrases,
Speaker 1: as long as they don't spell out profanity. Elang explained
Speaker 1: the majority of passenger vehicles today have license plates with
Speaker 1: six or seven characters, but some states allow vanity plates
Speaker 1: with a maximum of eight characters. In addition, most states
Speaker 1: do not allow letters IO and Q because they're too
Speaker 1: easily confused with zero in one. For many decades, the
Speaker 1: Department of Motor Vehicles system has used prison labor to
Speaker 1: meet the constant demand for new license plates. Elang said
Speaker 1: it's estimated that eighty percent of license plates in the
Speaker 1: United States are produced in prisons. In prisons, the actual
Speaker 1: metal plates are stamped, then the plastic sheeting is applied.
Speaker 1: Several prisons manufacture plates for multiple states. Just for one example,
Speaker 1: all of California's plates are cut and stamped out of aluminium.
Speaker 1: In a facility at Fulsoon State Penitentiary. The plant uses
Speaker 1: around one hundred and twenty inmates to churn out over
Speaker 1: forty five thousand license plates a day, consuming fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: pounds that's six eight hundred kilos of sheet metal in
Speaker 1: the process. Many advocacy groups, including the ACLU, have decried
Speaker 1: the use of prison labor in the United States. After all,
Speaker 1: inmates frequently make less than a dollar per hour on
Speaker 1: the job, even if the skills they learned there might
Speaker 1: help them in the future. We wanted to mention it here,
Speaker 1: but of course prison labor and other practices could be
Speaker 1: a whole series of episodes or a whole different series entirely.
Speaker 1: But back to license plates. The majority of plates issued
Speaker 1: to date have been hunks of lifeless, unchanging metal, but
Speaker 1: recently electronic plates have been introduced in states like California, Arizona, Michigan,
Speaker 1: and Texas. This new variety is a small flat panel
Speaker 1: screen roughly the same size as additional plate. It can
Speaker 1: either be hardwired into a vehicle's electrical system or supplied
Speaker 1: with an internal battery that will last about five years.
Speaker 1: The company responsible for these digital plates, Reviver, says that
Speaker 1: they're more convenient than the traditional plate because you can
Speaker 1: update vehicle registration online and see the change reflected on
Speaker 1: the digital plate screen. However, this does come at a
Speaker 1: subscription charge of nineteen ninety five a month or two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen dollars and forty cents for four years,
Speaker 1: and that's an addition to the fees charged by states
Speaker 1: for vehicle registration. If you want the plate hardwired, that
Speaker 1: requires an extra installation cost. Since you can renew or
Speaker 1: change out your metal tag for less money, digital tags
Speaker 1: probably hold more appeal for commercial enterprises that have to
Speaker 1: keep track of several vehicles at one time. Businesses could
Speaker 1: also monitor locations and mileage on their fleet with these plates.
Speaker 1: But even if digital plates take off with consumers, you'll
Speaker 1: probably will you be seeing the old pieces of stamped
Speaker 1: aluminum on American roads for many years to come. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is based on the article The Long Strange History
Speaker 1: of license plates in the US on how Stuffworks dot com,
Speaker 1: written by Talen Homer. The brain Stuff is production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot com and is
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my Heart
Speaker 1: Radio visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.