Good reasons for a license plate - and its illumination

Although the traffic density at the beginning of the 20th century was a far cry from today´s, there were already road hogs and above all gentlemen, who after an accident not at all gentlemanlike stealthily buzzed off to evade their responsibility. With these facts as justification, the motorists and motorcyclists were forced to register their vehicles in most countries in Europe and the USA around 1910. Visible sign of the registration is the license plate.

In order to protect the sheet metal and paint of the rear fenders, Harley-Davidson offered a mounting option for the license plate integrated into the light holder as early as the first electric tail light of 1915. So even if in some states vehicle owners still had to paint their registration plates themselves, the space for it was available ex works.

Since license plates in the U.S. had to be illuminated starting in the early 1930s so that offenders could be identified even in the dark, license plate lights became a design field of their own unless they were integrated into the tail light.