Artistic License Redux

When Idaho put a slogan on their license plates in 1928 it started a trend across all states and this would prove surprisingly contentious.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Roman Mars?

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• 0:44Roman Mars?

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• 1:28Roman Mars?

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• 1:55Roman Mars?

  This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

• 2:00Roman Mars?

  In 1928, a strange phenomenon was sweeping the state of Idaho, a vanishing act of sorts. A Boise resident would wake up on a typical Monday morning, drag themselves out of bed, get dressed for the day, and they would hop in their car to drive to work, not noticing that something was missing. And suddenly, cops in the rearview.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  And the next thing that the driver of the car knew, they were getting picked up because they weren't displaying a license plate.

• 2:27Roman Mars?

  Idaho historian Rick Just says license plates, well, they were disappearing. The Secretary of State was fielding complaints about all the lost tags. And soon enough, the culprit became clear.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Tourists would come to Idaho and steal the plates.

• 2:42Roman Mars?

  Idaho's license plates were being snatched up like plush hotel bathrobes.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. People would come up, they would pull up to either a tourist park or a motel or something, and they would spot those plates and think, you know, I'd like to have a souvenir. And so they would just take it off of the car and take it home.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  And there was a reason why people couldn't resist swiping Idaho plates in particular. That year, the state had revolutionized license plate design.

• 3:12Roman Mars?

  That's reporter Daniel Ackerman.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  Before this, plates were basic, with info like the state name and the registration numbers, all of this on a pretty simple, solid-colored background. But in 1928, the Secretary of State in Idaho had an epiphany. He was like, we have this half-square foot of open real estate just rolling around on everyone's cars. Let's do something with it.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  The 1928 plate is often said to be the very first advertising license plate in the country, the very first one that tried to advertise a product.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  And the product that Idaho chose will surprise absolutely no one.

• 3:48Roman Mars?

  The state's 1928 license plates all featured a single giant potato.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  A big, kind of elongated, goofy-looking potato, but big. It was almost as big as the plate.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  The registration numbers were stamped in green lettering right on top of this lumpy, brown spud. I would say it looks almost fecal in nature.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  It does. The shape particularly, yes, yes.

• 4:13Roman Mars?

  The execution wasn't perfect, but it was innovative. Below the tremendous tater, there was even a modest, pragmatic slogan: Idaho Potatoes.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Today, every state's got a marketing slogan. Hawaii is the aloha state. Missouri is the show me state. But Idaho was the first to put theirs on a license plate. They wanted to make sure that when people thought about Idaho, they thought potatoes.

• 4:38Roman Mars?

  And for better or worse, the association stuck.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  And now, it's gotten to be such a thing. I mean, coming up here in a few days at New Year's Eve, we drop a potato.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  What do you mean?

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Well, you know how the Times Square ball comes floating down like that? Well, we have a big potato that comes floating down. They've been doing it about 10 years now.

• 5:01Roman Mars?

  The concept of slapping a tagline onto a license plate might not seem like a big deal, but it turns out this idea would end up having outsized consequences, and not just for Idaho.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  We're talking legislative clashes, multiple Supreme Court cases, and even jail time.

• 5:18Roman Mars?

  Because what started in one state would soon spread. And when it did, the question of what should go on a license plate and what shouldn't would prove surprisingly contentious.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  The first state-issued license plates appeared at the very beginning of the 20th century, and they served a mostly bureaucratic function.

• 5:36Roman Mars?

  More people were buying and crashing cars every year, so state governments originally mandated plates as a way to keep track of all the nuts behind the wheel. No one was interested in sloganeering.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  But then, Americans discovered the road trip.

• 5:52Speaker 03

  Be the USA in your Chevrolet. Well, the big factor with increase in automobiles was that it allowed people freedom to roam. You could go wherever you wanted.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Christine Byron is a former history librarian at the Grand Rapids Public Library. She focuses on the history of tourism, and she says that the rise of the road trip in the 1920s created this huge new tourist market. Drivers needed services like gas stations and roadside motels that hadn't existed in the age of steam-powered travel.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  We're traveling east, we're traveling west. When you traveled by steamship or railroad, you pretty much brought what you needed with you, and your meals were served at a resort. But once the automobile came along, there was a lot more money that needed to be spent.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  From the state's perspective, all those new tourist dollars were up for grabs.

• 6:49Roman Mars?

  So states started letting the world know what they had to offer. Arizona had the Grand Canyon, Minnesota its lakes, New Mexico its average 310 days of sunshine per year.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  And in this war for tourists, states promoted themselves anywhere they could.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  National magazines, various automobile guides, The Blue Guide, The Green Book, and of course, tons and tons of promotional brochures.

• 7:16Roman Mars?

  But no one thought to advertise on a license plate until 1928, when Idahoans realized that their plates were too valuable to waste on just a registration number.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  And Rick Just says, once Idaho staked its starchy flag on the license plate, the rush was on.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  License plates became a different thing because of that potato.

• 7:37Roman Mars?

  States spent the middle of the century transforming their plates from austere government documents into colorful boosters of tourism and industry.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  You could even think of them as, you know, miniature little ads that are driving, you know, all over the state and all over the country, hopefully.

• 7:53Roman Mars?

  In 1940, Arizona stamped "Grand Canyon State" on its plates and never looked back. In 1950, Minnesota went with "Land of 10,000 Lakes."

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Meanwhile, New Mexico actually put "Sunshine State" on its plates in 1932, before Florida muscled in on the slogan in 1949.

• 8:11Roman Mars?

  Florida, for the record, only has an average of 237 days of sunshine per year, but whatever.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  Wisconsin was America's dairy land, Maine was vacation land.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Other states couldn't make up their minds. Michigan's plate, for example, initially sported the phrase "Water Wonderland" in 1954.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  Which then evolved into "Winter Water Wonderland."

• 8:33Speaker 02

  Followed by "Great Lakes State," "Great Lakes," and "Great Lakes Splendor."

• 8:38Roman Mars?

  In 1970, Michigan's State Tourism Council actually adopted the slogan, "The Michigans: The Almost Islands of the Great Lakes." But sadly, that plate never happened.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Today, license plates like these are a national institution. And it's fun, in a kitschy Americana kind of way. Each state is earnestly trying to put its best foot forward. So what could possibly be wrong here? It turns out, quite a bit.

• 9:05Roman Mars?

  Because as fun as some of these plates might have been, at half a square foot, a license plate is a small canvas. And when you have to pick one symbol to represent an entire state, you are not going to please everyone.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  And this has caused trouble from the get-go. In 1928, when Idaho unleashed the potato plates, it didn't go over all that well.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  People detested those license plates.

• 9:31Roman Mars?

  Lots of Idahoans, it turned out, resented being associated with the state's cash crop.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Particularly people from northern Idaho, because they don't grow potatoes up there. Really, it's a kind of a southeastern Idaho thing.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Newspaper editorials called it an embarrassment. One headline actually read, "Why Bring That Up?"

• 9:50Speaker 01

  And probably it's a good thing that they just dropped the idea entirely and went back to numbers in 1929.

• 9:58Roman Mars?

  No motto, no graphics, and certainly no potatoes.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  And license plate quarrels weren't unique to Idaho. Florida had to dump one of its plate designs after residents complained that the grapefruit with a stem attached looked more like a bomb. Massachusetts, meanwhile, tried to put a codfish right next to its state's name, only to be blamed by fishermen for a poor catch that year because the fish on the plate was swimming away from the word Massachusetts.

• 10:25Roman Mars?

  These dust-ups over license plate design can seem like, well, small potatoes. But the fight over license plates was about to be taken to the next level, thanks to a politician named Meljum Thompson.

• 10:38Speaker 04

  In this critical battle for the survival of America, we shall not tolerate a no-win settlement.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Thompson was a titan of New Hampshire politics in the 1970s. He served three terms as governor, and he was a conservative firebrand who hated Democrats.

• 10:57Speaker 04

  We must drive from the seats of power in the White House, Congress, and the State Department, all of the foul brood of commie lovers.

• 11:08Roman Mars?

  Thompson had a lot of unorthodox ideas, including wanting to arm the New Hampshire National Guard with nuclear weapons.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  And he was obsessed with freedom. Here's Thompson's dorky campaign song.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  "Live Free or Die," of course, is New Hampshire's fiery state motto. It was coined by a Revolutionary War vet. And Thompson loved it so much that before he became governor, he worked with allies in the state legislature to get it slapped on every car in the state.

• 11:49Speaker 05

  And I don't know of any more prominent place to carry a message than right on the license plate. That's the best billboard of all.

• 11:57Roman Mars?

  In 1971, the slogan on the state's license plate changed from scenic New Hampshire to live free or die.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  But not everyone embraced the state's message.

• 12:13Speaker 05

  That's ridiculous.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  At 88 years old, George Maynard still gets heated about the New Hampshire license plate.

• 12:23Roman Mars?

  And for good reason. It changed the course of his life.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  George grew up in Rhode Island. He married a woman, Maxine, who he'd actually met in junior high. They settled into a pretty typical family life. They had kids. George got a job as a newspaper printer. And then something happened, like really abruptly.

• 12:42Speaker 05

  In 1956, four years after I got married, the witnesses came to my house. They told me that God had a name, and his name was Jehovah.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  George and his family joined the Jehovah's Witnesses. And by 1972, they had moved to Claremont, New Hampshire. That's where the trouble started.

• 13:01Roman Mars?

  Every day, George would hop in his car and drive to work at the local printing press with his New Hampshire license plates screaming in all caps, "Live Free or Die."

• 13:11Speaker 02

  And this really grated on George because he didn't share Melvin Thompson's belief of freedom over everything. As a Jehovah's Witness, George actually believed that God-given life was more important than freedom.

• 13:23Speaker 05

  Oh, that's right. Definitely. And the real existence of life is very precious. Life is a gift, and we appreciate it very much.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  George didn't want the government telling him what to die for.

• 13:36Speaker 05

  So then one day I decided, you know, if it's offensive, why should be forced to support something that's offensive? So I covered it up with writ of tape.

• 13:46Roman Mars?

  And when he erased the state motto, George marched to the front lines of the license plate wars.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Covering up the slogan was a violation of state law. But a few weeks went by and not much happened. Until one day, George and Maxine were shopping. They left the store, they got to their car in the parking lot, and they saw a police officer writing them a ticket. George told me he'd been expecting this for a while. He didn't actually feel scared or surprised.

• 14:12Speaker 05

  Well, I was happy.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  You were happy?

• 14:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, because I was expressing my belief, my rejection of something.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  George refused to pay the $25 ticket. And of course...

• 14:23Speaker 05

  I kept the tape on. I did it again.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  The tickets piled up until his consistent refusal to pay landed him in court. And the judge put him away for 15 days.

• 14:33Speaker 05

  And so if you don't want to live free or die, you go to jail in New Hampshire.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Two weeks may not seem like hard time, but the sentence had a huge impact on George's life. When he didn't show up for work, he got fired. And he was embarrassed that his kids had to see him hauled away. Things were tough for the Maynard's.

• 14:52Roman Mars?

  But George still wasn't done fighting. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, he filed suit in New Hampshire, claiming the state's law prohibiting the altering of license plates was unconstitutional.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  And the state court agreed. But Meldrum "Live Free or Die Thompson" had become governor by then. And Thompson was not inclined to extend George the freedom to cover up his beloved motto. So Thompson appealed the case.

• 15:17Speaker 06

  We'll hear arguments next in...

• 15:20Speaker 02

  All the way to the US Supreme Court.

• 15:22Speaker 06

  75, 1453, Woolley against Maynard.

• 15:28Roman Mars?

  License plates collided with the First Amendment before the High Court in November of 1976.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  During oral arguments, George Maynard's lawyer claimed that in covering up "Live Free or Die," George was just exercising his freedom of expression. License plates are displayed on people's private vehicles. He argued the government can't just hijack that space and force people to express a certain viewpoint.

• 15:51Speaker 07

  And it's our position that the state lacks the power to require its citizens to bear this sort of motto. I think that if the court were to uphold this sort of thing, then the state could require all citizens to wear a pin or an armband, or they could require you to have a plaque on your door next to your address saying "Live Free or Die."

• 16:11Speaker 02

  New Hampshire countered with, "What's the big deal? Just because it's on the license plate doesn't mean every driver believes in it." And sometimes, it seemed like the court was buying it, like Justice Thurgood Marshall.

• 16:22Speaker 08

  The first time I noticed the mark bill was after this case was filed. I had never paid any attention to it. I knew it was a New Hampshire license. I said, "Well, it's about New Hampshire." But I didn't live or die about it. Well, most people in New Hampshire don't either. They accept it as the fact that it's...

• 16:39Roman Mars?

  So what was it? Was a license plate a declaration of the state's ideology, or just a thing that says nothing at all, since everybody had one?

• 16:46Speaker 02

  George couldn't make it to DC for the ruling. He actually found out the same way as everyone else.

• 16:52Speaker 09

  From CBS News Headquarters in New York, this is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. The Supreme Court ruled today that drivers may not be compelled to...

• 17:03Speaker 05

  Cronkite came on the news and says that the Supreme Court rule is in our favor that you can tape over the state bottles. And so, that was nice.

• 17:15Speaker 09

  The court, in effect, gave them permission to tape over the offensive words.

• 17:20Speaker 10

  I think the court got it right in the Maynard case.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Caroline Mala Corbin is a First Amendment scholar at the University of Miami. She says the court's 6-3 decision hinged on a concept called compelled speech.

• 17:32Speaker 10

  The First Amendment protects both your right to speak, so it protects you against government censorship. But the Free Speech Clause also protects your right not to speak. So it protects you against the government forcing you to say an ideological message that you disagree with. And that was what the problem was here.

• 17:56Speaker 05

  They were trying to force you to say something that you don't want to say and you don't want to live by.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  In George's homemade solution, that strip of red tape, it actually held up under the weight of the First Amendment.

• 18:09Speaker 05

  And so that's my way of expressing my free speech.

• 18:14Roman Mars?

  At this point, it might seem like George Maynard's case solved the license plate problem. Today, if you live in, say, New Jersey and object to the notion that you live in the Garden State, well, you can cover that sucker up. Your car is not a government billboard on wheels.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  But it turns out the constitutional battle over license plates is not over. Because after all that was settled, a new problem showed up: specialty plates.

• 18:39Roman Mars?

  You've seen these. Unlike vanity plates, where drivers choose their own numbers and letters, specialty plates sport alternate designs with their own logos and slogans. They're usually put out in collaboration with the government by a non-governmental organization.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  When drivers choose a specialty plate, they pay a little extra. And those proceeds get split between their chosen group and the State Department of Motor Vehicles.

• 19:03Speaker 10

  So, for example, in my family, we have a "Save the Manatee" license plate. That's a specialty license plate that the state of Florida offers that we paid extra money to purchase.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  Why did you choose the manatee plate?

• 19:19Speaker 10

  What a ridiculous question! We want to save the manatee, naturally.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Specialty plates are easy money. A lot of states will issue one to almost any nonprofit, as long as enough people are interested.

• 19:30Roman Mars?

  But the problem with an open-door policy is you might not like who comes inside. And a decade ago, the state of Texas learned that the hard way.

• 19:39Speaker 11

  I'm now calling the meeting for November 10, 2011, of the Board of the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles to order.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  Usually, public hearings for the DMV are dull bureaucratic affairs, poorly attended. But in 2011, the Board of the Texas DMV held a standing-room-only hearing.

• 19:55Speaker 11

  So we're going to move to Agenda Item 5A, which is the approval of specially licensed plate.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  The DMV Board votes on proposed designs for specialty plates. They generally approve the designs with very little fanfare or scrutiny. But this one was different.

• 20:12Roman Mars?

  The Sons of Confederate Veterans wanted Texas to issue a license plate featuring the Confederate battle flag, and a lot of people weren't happy about it. Dozens of community leaders showed up to testify.

• 20:23Speaker 12

  Good morning. Thank you very much for letting me come.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  That voice you're hearing is Sanphonia Thompson. She's a Texas State House representative and a Black woman born in 1939.

• 20:36Speaker 12

  There was a time that I could not even come on the grounds of the Capitol because I was Black. And it's very difficult to be able to see these symbols because they bring back memories. And to me, it's like sticking poop in the face of Black people every day to see them. That's how repulsive it is.

• 20:56Speaker 13

  We have folks who say, "Well, I'm offended by the SCV plate." And my response is, "And your point?"

• 21:06Speaker 02

  In favor of the Confederate flag plates was Jerry Patterson. He's the Commissioner of the Texas Land Office and a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

• 21:15Speaker 13

  No one has a right to go through life to be unoffended.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Patterson made a First Amendment argument. He thought that if enough people like him wanted a specialty plate related to Texas history, then the state shouldn't be allowed to prevent him from having it.

• 21:29Speaker 13

  There's also some folks who've suggested, "Well, now, if you want to do that, how about a Mexican flag plate?" And I say, "Bring it on."

• 21:35Speaker 02

  And if that plate offended anyone?

• 21:37Speaker 13

  My response to them is, "Well, get a grip. It's going to happen, as it should be."

• 21:43Speaker 02

  After two hours of tense testimony, the Board held its vote.

• 21:48Speaker 11

  All those in favor of denying the plate, please raise your right hand. All is opposed. Motion carries unanimously. The plate is denied.

• 22:03Roman Mars?

  There would not be a Texas license plate featuring a Confederate flag.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  But then, the Sons of Confederate Veterans sued.

• 22:12Speaker 10

  Arguing that the state had violated their free speech rights by targeting speech that they did not like.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  Remember, Texas had an open-door policy on specialty plates, which meant that they weren't normally in the business of picking sides. So the state really was singling out the Sons of Confederate Veterans when it denied their plate.

• 22:33Roman Mars?

  And once again, there was a lot at stake here. George Maynard's "Live Free or Die" case had established that you could reject the state's messaging if it didn't suit you. But was it OK for the state to reject your message on a state-issued license plate?

• 22:48Speaker 14

  Your argument first this morning in case 14-144.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  So in 2015, license plates were back in the Supreme Court.

• 22:56Speaker 14

  John Walker versus the Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

• 23:01Roman Mars?

  This was a really close decision, a 5-4 split. But the court's majority sided with Texas. The state could deny the Confederate flag plates.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  The court acknowledged Jerry Patterson's right to display symbols, even abhorrent ones, on, say, a bumper sticker. But they said that right does not extend to license plates.

• 23:20Speaker 10

  Because the Supreme Court held that specialty license plates were government's speech.

• 23:27Roman Mars?

  And the government's right to speak is also protected.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Justice Stephen Breyer, in his opinion, actually pointed to a kind of legal symmetry with the "Live Free or Die" case. Just like a state can't force an individual to display a message...

• 23:41Speaker 14

  So the Sons of Confederate Veterans cannot force Texas to convey on its license plates a message with which the state does not agree.

• 23:51Roman Mars?

  Ultimately, the Supreme Court's decision in George Maynard's case didn't resolve all the issues around license plates, and neither will the Texas decision.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Caroline Malakorben thinks license plates will always be a contested space, a government-issued document displayed on a private vehicle. It's as if a license plate is a kind of bullhorn, only instead of taking turns speaking...

• 24:15Speaker 10

  You have both the government and private individuals shouting into the bullhorn. The problem is, they're both speaking.

• 24:25Roman Mars?

  And perhaps that's why this little hunk of metal has so often become an ideological battleground, a place for governments and citizens to clash over the identity of an entire state in its attempt to reduce it to a slogan and symbol speeding down the highway.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  And those debates are still playing out. The Supreme Court ruling empowered Texas to keep the Confederate flag off its license plates, but it also empowered states to make the opposite choice, and at least six have.

• 24:53Roman Mars?

  If you live in South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, or Tennessee, you can go to your local DMV today and register your car with a state-issued specialty plate bearing a Confederate battle flag.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  In a couple of those states, Tennessee and South Carolina, lawmakers have actually introduced bills that would ban the flag from specialty plates. But so far, neither bill has gotten a vote.

• 25:18Roman Mars?

  And in Idaho, although it might not ever make it to the US Supreme Court, the state's official license plate still raises eyebrows.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  And, you know, I wish we would change it.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  And some folks, like Rick Just, are still less than happy about it.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  I don't think that anybody really thinks it's a bad, evil thing or anything, but, you know, I'm just tired of it.

• 25:41Roman Mars?

  There is no longer a lumpy brown spud on the license plate, but the motto still reads "Famous Potatoes."

• 25:54Roman Mars?

  When we come back, reporter Daniel Ackerman takes us into the subculture of license plate collectors. You knew they existed. They do exist. Stay with us.

• 26:14Roman Mars?

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• 26:56Roman Mars?

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• 28:26Roman Mars?

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• 29:31Roman Mars?

  So I'm here with Daniel Ackerman. Hey, Dan.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Hey, Roman.

• 29:34Roman Mars?

  So I know you talked to some really passionate license plate collectors for this story that we ended up cutting out, but can you tell us more about them?

• 29:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, so amateur collectors are really the keepers of this history. There's not like a Smithsonian museum of the American license plate or anything like that.

• 29:49Roman Mars?

  It's just kind of archived in the basements and attics around the country?

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And one of those archivists is Stuart Berg. I recently visited Stuart here in Boston to check out his collection because he's been collecting since he was a kid in the 70s. And he said he inherited his first plates from his grandfather.

• 30:07Speaker 16

  My grandfather had a lot of really cool old cars and there were 21 plates hanging in his garage. And at one point, I took them all down and I actually have every one of those plates except one today. And the one that I got rid of, I'm dying to get back.

• 30:28Roman Mars?

  So like every true collector, his collection is perpetually one item short.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, although he has certainly made up for that missing plate in terms of volume because at one point he told me his plate collection topped 100,000.

• 30:43Roman Mars?

  Whoa, but how do you even accumulate that many plates?

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Roman, I wanted to know that too, but Stuart was pretty reluctant to give up his sources.

• 30:52Roman Mars?

  Oh, I see.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  But when it was at its height, his plate collection, it was so thorough that, you know, in the classic car world, someone who wanted an accurate vintage plate to go with their vintage car, they would just call up Stuart.

• 31:04Speaker 16

  And I wanted every year that if somebody said, hey, I need a three-digit plate for my Buick from 1931, can you, can you get me one? And I'd, I'd have it.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  So when I went to visit Stuart, we sat out on the pool deck near his condo because of COVID, and he rolled out this wagon with two huge plastic tubs completely packed with plates. Each one was in its own little protective sleeve. And he just started pulling out and showing me some of his favorites, starting with some of the earliest state-issued license plates, which were from the first decade of the 1900s.

• 31:38Roman Mars?

  And so what were those like?

• 31:39Speaker 02

  They were really fancy. To me, they actually looked more like fine china than vehicle tags. And that's because they were literally made of porcelain.

• 31:46Roman Mars?

  Well, that seems a little too fragile to go on a car. Like, how does that work?

• 31:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, he, he was actually pretty proud that he had some without any like chips or dings in them. But, you know, keep in mind, at that time, only really rich people owned cars. Like, they weren't even that reliable of, as a mode of transport, but they were definitely a status symbol. And the license plates kind of played along. They were this smooth cobalt blue with bold white numbering.

• 32:12Speaker 16

  And I can actually show you one if you'd like to see it.

• 32:19Speaker 16

  Here's a 1909 number five. Feel how heavy that is.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:23Speaker 16

  It was registered to a James P. Sterns, 31 Pleasant Street in Brookline, Mass. For a three horsepower Pope Electric.

• 32:31Roman Mars?

  A Pope Electric? What's a Pope Electric?

• 32:33Speaker 02

  It's an electric car.

• 32:34Roman Mars?

  Oh, okay. Well, there you go.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  So, I mean, this is before combustion took over. They were still experimenting with all these different types of engines. That's how new the automobile was at the time.

• 32:45Roman Mars?

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  So I don't know if you caught that, but the license plate number was just five, as in it was Massachusetts' fifth state license plate.

• 32:52Roman Mars?

  That is remarkable. I mean, having, you know, license plate number five has got to confer some bragging rights in the license plate collection community.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Right. It absolutely does. And at the time, it also conferred bragging rights to the owner, like James P. Sterns. He was a bank president, so he was, you know, kind of high society at the time. And Stewart also had First Lady Frances Cleveland's license plate, married to President Grover Cleveland, and she was number 44.

• 33:20Roman Mars?

  Forty-four is pretty good. But I dig it that the era of fancy porcelain plates with low numbers didn't last all that long.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  No, and that's thanks mainly to Henry Ford and his Model T. Cars got way more affordable in the 1910s, and in the first quarter of the century, the number of registered cars in the US jumped from 8,000 to more than 18 million. So as early as 1916, Massachusetts was stamping their plates out of tin, which was way cheaper.

• 33:47Roman Mars?

  So these mass-produced metal plates, they hit the scene, and that's when, you know, license plates, as we talk about in the story, basically become billboards.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Right. They become this space where states can play around with graphics and slogans, and Stewart has thousands of examples. So during our interview, he was, you know, pulling out plate after plate after plate. Like, I would try to ask him a question, and he would, you know, throw off a one-word answer, but already be pulling out the next graphic plate to show me.

• 34:15Speaker 16

  This is a golden jubilee from the state of Washington from 1939. The 36 Wyoming was the first year of the Buckingham Bronco. Mount Rushmore in 1952 was on the plate. It was the first year of the state-shaped plate in Tennessee. South Carolina in 1930, they're the iodine state.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  Where they, like, produce iodine?

• 34:34Speaker 16

  Yep. Here's the New York World's Fair. No real graphics, but it does have a lot of words on it.

• 34:40Roman Mars?

  Wow. It's kind of fun to hear all the experimentation that was going on. Like, the Tennessee plate was shaped like Tennessee. That's pretty cool.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, he said that one was actually pretty tough to mount on people's cars.

• 34:51Roman Mars?

  I bet.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you know, that experimentation really exploded in the 1970s when states started putting a reflective coating on the license plates. And that basically let them print really detailed graphics rather than having to like emboss the shapes into the metal. So designs got really busy. And I think that is perhaps best exemplified by the plates that Illinois recently introduced just back in 2017.

• 35:18Roman Mars?

  So let's pull that one up. Oh, yeah. Okay, so there's a lot going on here.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:22Roman Mars?

  It has the light blue and red of the Chicago flag, which I like. That looks like the top of the State House, I'm assuming? And then a windmill?

• 35:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, shout out to rural Illinois.

• 35:35Roman Mars?

  Yeah, because right next to that is the Chicago skyline. And then, of course, at the very far left edge is half a face of Abraham Lincoln.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  Right, so there's not even enough room for him. He's like split right down the nose.

• 35:50Roman Mars?

  And it has "Land of Lincoln," of course, which is their motto. What's kind of interesting about this is like, this is kind of the opposite of the Idaho potato problem that we talked about in the piece. I mean, this is not the whole state boiled down into one thing. This is the whole state boiled down into way too many things to put on a license plate.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  Right, and you know, it's not pretty because it's not like the canvas gets any bigger. It's still just this half a square foot and you're cramming ever more onto it.

• 36:16Roman Mars?

  And so what do, you know, people like Stuart, you know, license plate collectors make of, you know, this kind of graphical onslaught? Like, what do they think of this as compared to the old plates?

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, most collectors I talked to expressed a preference for those older plates with the simple sleek design. But a lot of them also just take the whole thing in stride because to guys like Stuart, the more the merrier, right?

• 36:40Speaker 17

  Do you think license plate design has gotten like too busy and complicated?

• 36:46Speaker 16

  No, I don't. Here's a knee plate. This is one of my favorites. It's the Georgia Peach.

• 36:55Speaker 16

  What else do I have that I can show you?

• 36:57Roman Mars?

  More graphics just means more plates. It just means more joy for Stuart.

• 37:02Speaker 16

  Absolutely, yes. Just more grist for the collector's mill. Here's a Texas Centennial plate from 1936. Here's New Mexico, 1940. Great graphics on these. Utah, center scenic America in 1942. Ohio in 1938. Early graphic plate from Rhode Island. 41 Hawaii. Here's an Oklahoma plate with an F in the middle.

• 37:29Speaker 16

  This is a very, very rare plate.

• 37:40Roman Mars?

  That story originally aired in 2021. It was produced by Daniel Ackerman, edited by Joe Rosenberg, original tech production by Bryson Barnes, remix by Martin Gonzalez, music by Swan Real. Special thanks this week to a whole bunch of additional people we interviewed for this story, including Virginia Scharf, Eugene Volokh, Peter Blodgett, Dan Smith, Thomas Wilson, and especially Tennessee State Representative G.A. Hardaway, who has been fighting to get the Confederate battle flag off the state's specialty plates. Kathy Too is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is the digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Jason DeLeon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson,

• 38:20Roman Mars?

  Vivian Le, Lashma Dawn, Kelly Prime, Jacob Medina Gleason, Talon and Rain Stradely, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% visible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the SiriusXM Podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora Building in beautiful Uptown Oakland, California. You can find us on all the usual social media sites, as well as our own Discord server. There's a link to that, as well as some pictures of very fun license plates, and of course, every past episode of 99PI at 99pi.org.

• 39:09Speaker 18

  This podcast is supported by Nurtac ODT, Remedy Pant. We know you didn't ask for an interruption, but migraine doesn't wait for the right moment to interrupt either. It just barges in, takes your time, and throws everything off. So when migraine takes your time, take Nurtac. It's for the acute treatment of migraine with or without aura in adults. Nurtac can provide pain relief in two hours, which can last up to two days. Ask your healthcare provider if Nurtac is right for you, because your time is for you, not migraine. Don't take if allergic to Nurtac ODT. Allergic reactions can occur even days after use. Get help right away for trouble breathing, rash, swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or throat. High blood pressure and Raynaud's Syndrome can occur. Get help for high blood pressure, numbness, coolness, pain, or color changes in fingers

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