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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