Fascinating History of Registration Plates in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania registration boards have not changed much this millennium.

While a few changes have been made to the standard blue, white and yellow design that has been in effect since 1999, a demanding eye is needed to observe them.

A completely new version, which will come in the spring of this year, will be a rather substantial review. But the renewal – which presents Bell Liberty and a patriotic mixture of red, white and blue to celebrate the future semiquentenial – is just a small chapter in the long and surprisingly interesting history of Commonwealth design.

In Spurts, Pennsylvania was a hub for attractive plates to honor everything Otters of river to dare to friend them with Quaker. Some models, such as a tribute brought to the Pennsylvania state flagship, have even won prizes from the enthusiasts.

While the new design is respectable, the review of the last 119 years of plates in Pennsylvania reveals the more capricious part of this mandatory vehicle ornament.

The first days

Commonwealth began to offer drivers in 1906, three years after it made them mandatory. Unlike today’s aluminum plates were early Made of porcelain And it came in a series of colors.

A few years in the 1920s, however, blue and yellow – the colors of our state flag – began to prevail in designs.

What began as simple gold and blue combinations turned into a series of plates displayed above a Pennsylvania silhouette, a format that has taken place for decades.

Friendly phrases

Pennsylvania began incorporating phrases into her plate projects in the 1970s, a change that was currently transported.

The first plate with phrase before was blue, with a bell of bell of monotonous yellow freedom and “bicentenary state, ’76” written at the bottom.

The enthusiast plates have loved the new look. In 1971, The Association of Collectors of Auto Registration PlatesA hobbyist group with members from all over the country, granted first place in the inaugural place “The best registration plate contest. “

Once it has passed 200 years of birth of the nation in 1976, Pennsylvania threw the color scheme, replaced the bell with a key stone and changed the basement to the “Keystone State”.

Then came 1983, when the Dick Thornburgh government decided to mix things. As part of a wider tourist initiative, Commonwealth has announced a new standard emission plate, supplemented with the expression: “You have a friend in Pennsylvania.”

The capture phrase and had the ugly.

“Without jokes, the new Pennsylvania plates really say” you have a friend in Pennsylvania “, which makes me wonder who is the chief editor of the Pennsylvania registration boards,” Russell Baker from New York Times gave up in a 1986 columnstating that the “clinker” was “boring” and nonspecific.

Decades later, a morning call reader was still confused by saying grammar.

But that only shows how deep the slogan, which was dreamed of by an advertising firm And also used in TV and radio spots, it has become rooted. Thirty years after its establishment, Thornburgh called the tourist campaign “You have a friend” one of the “main achievements” of his administration.

“It covers so much of what we sell in Pennsylvania, starting with friendship,” said the former governor for The Pittsburgh Business Times in 2013. “Our state’s founder, William Penn, was a quaker or a friend. This was part of our motivation. “

Funnly, the slogan has not appeared on Commonwealth vehicles for a long time. In 1987, and under a new governor, another “Keystone State” blue and yellow design appeared.

Special dishes for special causes

This new model was in effect until the 1990s, when the Pennsylvania registration plates became more than a means of identifying vehicles and promoting tourism.

In 1993, Pennsylvania allowed any car owner with $ 35 to deviate from the norm, running optional “special fund” that entered a The tendency of the graphic plate at national level And a long line of more personalized and problem -oriented offers has started.

First one came with one The image of a owl crouched on a branch of green hemlock. The receipts on each sold plate were to the state The background of savage resources conservationwho had no stable funding before then.

Moved by the new models, Pennsylvanians began to use their plates to support zoos (Jungly Tiger plate was super popular), discourages drug useand commemorates on Erie, based on Erie Niagara flagship. (Unfortunately, the Niagara plate – second of Pennsylvaniei “The best registration plate“The winner – was interrupted less than two years after launch, due to the contrast problems that the revente leisibility.)

Until 2000, Penndot issued about 450,000 special fund plates, according to Associated Press. Currently, there are almost 138,000 special funds on the road, on the data provided Pa Local – including 26,462 with the owl that started everything and 5,368 with the evasive battal.

Nowadays, you can still get plates that deviate from the norm, from an illustration of a Butterflies pollen by a flower TO an eagle With the words “in God we trust” military plates for veterinarians.

But the attractive designs, full of eyes, from the 90’s, are no longer. Special and special background boards today use design with standard problems as a foundation and report images or logos to the left of the plate number a change lamented by Pennsilvanians which is missing the old times of the images throughout the plate. (The exception is “Keep the inheritance“The plate, which presents a painting from 1928 of a railway train from Pennsylvania.)

Entry into the digital era

The last great shaking before this year’s redesign happened at the end of the century, when the white – and the world web – entered the road.

Under the governor Tom Ridge, the earliest version of our current design started in 1999, praising a white plate with blue letters, a small key separator, a strip of blue at the top and a strip of yellow at the bottom.

Instead of a nickname or state saying, it included in particular the URL for the former state website, “Www.state.pa.us”, Making Pennsylvania the first of the Union that incorporated a web address in the registration plate.

“This new registration plate reflects Pennsylvania in motion,” Ridge said at that time. “It reflects the interest in bringing technology to Pennsylvania.”

This aspect has evolved a little over the past 26 years – the URL is now Visitpa.com, Registration stickers have been retiredAnd the yellow and blue stripes are more opaque – but there have been no major changes until this year.

A new era

Commonwealth will begin to run the new design this spring, once its current plate is exhausted.

Announced last summer, the “Let Freedom Ring” plate, with a bell from gray in the background, sparked speech at national level. Some pennsilvanians have argued that the prominence of the landmark makes Philadelphia too focused.

The patriotic color scheme, language and images are meant to celebrate “Pennsylvania as a place of birth of American democracy and freedom”, as well as to highlight “the main role of the state on the 250 anniversary of our country in 2026,” said for Pa Local, the spokesman of Penndot, Aimee Inama. It should also “complete” Pennsylvania Renewed tourist branding.

The design breaks the reign over the century of yellow on the implicit plates of Pennsylvania. He also left for the first time in the Internet era: a web address.

“Pennsilvanians should not look at the state web sites while driving – but fortunately, Commonwealth has invested in new technology and improving digital services that make it easier than ever to find necessary information about www.pa.gov“, Said Inama about the lack of an URL.

The change will also prevent the state from producing registration plates with site addresses that “could become outdated on a day,” Inama added.

So far, over 100,000 have requested updates at the time the new plate will be available on the Inama. If you are interested in getting these updates, you can Sign up here. But if you prefer your owl plate, I understand it.

90.5 Wesa Partners with Spotlight PA, a collaborative news room, funded by readers, who produces liability journalism for the whole Pennsylvania. More at Spotlightpa.org.