License Plates Issued Through 1917

Early Vehicle Registration in the U.S.

A variety of factors contributed to the need felt by local and state governments at the dawn of the twentieth century to tax and regulate the use of motor vehicles and their operators. In September 1893 the nation's first practical (by standards of the day) self-propelled machine was operated on the streets of Springfield, Mass., by Charles E. and J. Frank Duryea. Four years later, no less than four companies were organized for the purpose of producing motorized vehicles. Although these early cars were crude, often little more than the chassis and body of a horse-drawn buggy with an engine installed, within a decade cars were large and fast enough that they began to take a serious toll on roads designed for slower, more gentle traffic powered by oats rather than gasoline, steam, and electricity. Revenue needed to be raised to fund road maintenance and construction, and the increasing number of vehicles needed to be tracked. Registration was the answer, and license plates soon followed.

In April of 1901, New York became the first state to require that vehicles be registered, but motorists were required to make or otherwise procure their own markers. In 1903, a registration law took effect in Massachusetts that included the provision, by the state, of what were the nation's first uniform, state-issued license plates. Rhode Island became the second state to require registration and provide uniform plates, in 1904, and other states, mostly in the Northeast, followed in the ensuing years.

1903-1907: Registration Begins in Washington, D.C.

As occurred in many states, the earliest license plates used in the District of Columbia were provided by vehicle owners and took many forms, often leather pads with metal house numbers attached. In many cases the assigned number was simply painted directly on the vehicle. The only requirements as to the manner in which registration numbers were shown is that figures had to be at least 3” in height with a stroke of not less than 3/8”. Only the number was required to be displayed until Oct. 24, 1904, when an amendment to the city Automobile Board's regulations took effect requiring that “DC” also be included. Although there was no fee when registrations were first required in late August 1903, applicants had to appear before the Automobile Board in order that their competence could be ascertained.

The Automobile Board had been created in 1903 by the city's Board of Commissioners, members of which were appointed by the president to execute administrative matters of running the city's government. (In 1968 the Board of Commissioners was replaced by the current mayor and city council form of administration.) As is still the case today, in 1903 legal oversight of the District was vested in Congress. Under this system, both the House and Senate have committees that, through their power, facilitate day-to-day operations of city government.

Regulations adopted by operational-level panels, such as the Automobile Board, take effect after a mandatory Congressional review period. That period for the District's first vehicle registration regulations lapsed, apparently without Congressional comment, on August 29, 1903. The first registrations were then assigned based upon regulations that had been adopted by the Board of Commissioners on May 3, 1903.

Annual reports of the Automobile Board indicate that 2,463 vehicle registrations were issued during the period during which motorists were required to provide their own way of displaying their assigned number. This period covered four years, one month, and one day: from Aug. 29, 1903, through Sept. 30, 1907. During this period, no distinction, for purposes of registration, is known to have been made between vehicles of various types.

Whether the first number issued was 1 or 100 is unknown, but plate numbers up to approximately 600 are believed to have been assigned during the final 125 days of 1903. Numbers issued from the beginning of 1904 through the end of Sept. 1907 are as follows: 1904, c.600-994; 1905, 995-1510; 1906, 1511-2037, and 1907, 2038-2463.

1907-1917: The Porcelain Era

The curtain closed on the District's homemade plate era at the end of September 1907. Replacing the variety of owner-provided markers and numbers displayed in other fashions were uniform, white-on-black undated porcelain plates, issued singly, that were provided by the D.C. government and used for ten years. They were first issued on Oct. 8, 1907, and all holders of existing registrations received one during October. There are two distinct varieties of this plate, with more subtle differences existing in both styles. For purposes of this discussion, we refer to the earlier style as “type 1” and the later as “type 2.”

Type 1 plates are characterized by 1/2” lettering used for DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, which appears across the top of all 1907-1917 plates, whereas this feature on type 2 plates is displayed in much bolder 1” letters. (See example above.) The change in lettering style appeared on plates issued during mid-1914 at some as yet unidentified point between plates 19840 (small lettering) and 19968 (large lettering). All 1907-17 plates are 6” high, and all type 1 plates, as well as type 2 plates numbered up to 9999 are 10” wide. When a fifth digit was added in 1912 the width was increased to 12”, resulting in a plate identical in its dimensions to modern North American plates.

As for registration numbers, type 1 plates, manufactured by the Lamb & Tilden Co., of Washington, are numbered from 100 through 2500. Although not all later plates are marked as to their origin, at least some bear the maker's seals of prominent porcelain plate manufacturers Baltimore Enamel & Novelty Co., of Baltimore, Md., and Ingram-Richardson Co., of Beaver Falls, Pa. It is reported in the work cited in the following paragraph that Baltimore Enamel and Novelty likely made the majority of the post-Lamb and Tilden plates. Only a relatively small number, less than 2,000, can be directly associated with Ingram-Richardson.

Exactly which registration numbers were issued annually during this period is unknown, but a set of seemingly reliable estimates has been made. Much of our pre-1918 plate information comes from Nine Decades of Automobile Licensing in the Nation's Capital by early registration and plate historian Stephen J. Raiche, a former D.C. resident. In his 1994 work, the author writes that although early records are incomplete, “it is possible, however, to project a year-by-year breakdown of the numbers issued on the porcelain plates by carefully analyzing monthly registration totals and revenue collections reported in detail by the Automobile Board. The figures presented in the table below are presumed to be quite reliable since the highest tag known in a collection correlates within 1,000 numbers of the projected figure for the last issued plate. The totals below assume the lowest number to have been #100, and presume that all duplicate tags (i.e. replacements for lost or mutilated originals) would have received new numbers.”

1907	100-1541
1908	1542-2548
1909	2549-4343
1910	4344-6272
1911	6273-9289
1912	9290-12868
1913	12869-16862
1914	16863-24803
1915	24804-33668
1916	33669-45525
1917	45526-61395

Note that registration numbers listed above do not correlate to the number of vehicles in use at any single point in time. Vehicles were routinely removed from service or taken out of the District, resulting in assigned numbers no longer being used. The city's superintendent of licenses, who took over responsibility for the registration of vehicles during 1917, estimated at the end of that year (as 1907-17 plates were at the end of their useful lives) that approximately 25,000 vehicles were likely in use in the District at the time.

With the introduction of city-issue plates in late 1907, a $1 one-time registration fee was charged, presumably to cover the cost of the plate. These plates could legally be displayed only on the vehicle to which they were first assigned; that is, they could not be transferred to another vehicle or individual.

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	This page last updated on September 1, 2008
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