Every time a traffic camera catches a speeding vehicle or a hit-and-run witness scribbles down a registration number, it is relying on a system that dates back over 130 years, one that was invented not because of GPS or digital databases, but because early automobiles were causing chaos on streets still dominated by horse-drawn carriages, and nobody could figure out who was responsible. The vehicle number plate, that small rectangular slab of metal or aluminium fixed to the front and rear of every car, truck, bus, and bike on the road, has a history that stretches from 19th-century Paris through two world wars, prison factories, and India's own colonial-era registration chaos.