The U.S. state of Nebraska first required its residents to register their motor vehicles and display license plates in 1915. All plates were made of steel until 1947 when aluminum plates were introduced.
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Passenger plates 1915 to present
In 1956, the U.S. states and Canadian provinces came to an agreement with the Automobile Manufacturers Association that fixed the size for license plates for vehicles, except those for motorcycles, at six inches in height by twelve inches in width, with standardized mounting holes. The 1955 (dated 1956) issue was the first Nebraska license plate that complied with these standards.
County coding
Nebraska established a county-code system for its passenger plates in 1922, with one- or two-digit codes assigned to each county in order of the number of registered vehicles in the county at that time. These codes remained constant through 1950.
For 1951, letter codes were used. One-letter codes were assigned to the first counties whose names began with those letters, while all other counties were assigned two-letter codes consisting of the initial letter and the next available letter in their names (the letters I, O and Q were not used). There were three exceptions: Douglas County, the most populous in the state, was assigned single-letter X to increase capacity; Otoe County was assigned Z as O was not allowed; and Dodge County was assigned DG instead of DD as double-letter codes were also not allowed.
The numeric code system was reintroduced in 1952, with the codes the same as before. It remains in use to this day, except in Douglas, Lancaster and Sarpy Counties, which adopted an uncoded ABC 123 serial format in 2002.