President Rutherford B. Hayes
may not be famous for a lot of things, but he should get credit for being an
early adopter. Of telephone technology, that is.
The telephone was invented by
Bell, who famously said “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you” on March 10,
1876 (for the moment, we’ll ignore Elisha Gray’s famous challenge about the
patent).
Little more than a year later, President Hayes had a telephone instrument installed in the White House telegraph room. Almost 140 years later,
President Herbert Hoover installed the first telephone in the Oval Office in
March 1929.
Telegraph was the dominant
communication technology in 1877 and would remain so for another 30-40 years,
until the early 20th century. In fact, in 1877, the U.S. Treasury
Department had the only direct connection by telephone to the White House, so
Hayes wasn’t getting too many calls in those early years.
By the way, the White House
telephone number was “1” in 1877. It’s a rather quaint historical footnote.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber
2015 All rights reserved.
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