August 14th: Vehicle licence plates

The world’s first car registration plates, were introduced in France on this date in 1893. Here are ten things you may not have known about number plates.

1. The next country to introduce them was Germany in 1896 and then the Netherlands in 1898. In the USA, the first state to require license plates was New York in 1903. Massachusetts was the first state where the government issued them, also in 1903. The UK required them from 1 January 1904.
2. Because number plates are, in most places, issued by the government, or a government authorised agency, making your own is tantamount to forging an official document and is therefore illegal.
3. Early licence plates were made of porcelain, which proved impractical. Very few of those plates survive today. Delaware, however, still offers a porcelain plate and is the only state to continue to do so. The quest to find the best material for them included cardboard, leather and plastic. Iron with a porcelain enamel was eventually adopted in the US, but come wartime, and metal shortages, licence plates were made from pressed soybeans.
4. In America, there are often graphics on plates, usually something representing the state of issue. The first graphic to appear on a license plate was a Potato, representing Idaho.
5. In Northern Canada in 1970, licence plates were issued in the shape of Polar Bears.
6. Vehicles owned by the United States Postal Service do not bear license plates. Instead, they have an identification number painted on the vehicle itself. Another vehicle which never had one was Steve Jobs's car. For reasons best known to himself, he didn't want plates on his car. Yet, he never got a ticket. He took advantage of a loophole in the law in California which allowed drivers six months to put the plates on a new car. So Steve Jobs got around it by simply buying a new car every six months.
7. When number plates were first issued in the UK, the first one was A1, and people queued overnight outside the London City Council offices to get it. The winner was Earl Russell.
8. Personalised number plates are big business. Prices range from about £100 to tens or even hundreds of thousands. As a general rule of thumb, the older the plate the more it will cost, as they tend to be rarer and have less letters and numbers on them. Popular initials command a higher price, as do plates that spell words, like W4 TER or AR53 NAL, or names, such as PET 3R, J4 MES, L1 NDA or JUL 1E. Number plates which spell out rude words are banned, so SH 1T won't be available.
9. The most expensive personalised numberplate ever sold in the UK was "F1" when businessman Afzal Khan coughed up £440,625 for the Formula One initials. The number plate was worth more than his car, a Mercedes-Benz McLaren. The world record goes to the licence plate "1" which was bought at an auction in Abu Dhabi by Saeed Abdul Ghaffer Khouri who paid £7 million for it in 2008.
10. Personalised plates are popular among celebrities. MAG 1C belonged to Paul Daniels and EH 1 to Englebert Humperdinck. H41RDO was bought by Nicky Clarke; BOX111G by Amir Khan, COM1C by Jimmy Tarbuck, and fans of the UK version of The Apprentice will be familiar with AMS 1, Alan Sugar's car.

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