Techie Presidents and The Gadgets They Loved

Techie Presidents and The Gadgets They Loved

In celebration of Presidents day, let's take a look back at the communication technology presidents used to communicate with their team and to address the nation: 

Abraham Lincoln - Telegraph

Although the telegraph wasn’t anything new when president Lincoln went into office in 1861, he did became the president who would embrace it and use it as a tool during the war. It was said that he would even sleep in the telegraph office just to be sure he didn’t miss a message. It kept him in touch with army generals and helped him make sure his leadership was heard…even from a distance.

Rutherford B. Hayes – Telephone

Remember President Rutherford B. Hayes? Well, he was the one who installed the first telephone…in the telegraph room of course. He was all about the technology, too bad he didn’t get many calls, even though the White House number was pretty easy to remember, ‘‘1’’… yup just ‘‘1’’. Truth is no one really had a telephone in 1877 and it would take 50 years after that to have a telephone line installed in the Oval Office.

Calvin Coolidge / Franklin Roosevelt – Radio

On December 6^th 1923, Calvin Coolidge became the first president to deliver his State of the Union address to radio listeners. But, it would be Franklin Roosevelt who would later become known as a master at communicating via radio, so much so that he had broadcasting equipment permanently installed in the White House. Radio would become the go to tool for presidents communicating messages to the nation.

Harry S. Truman – TV broadcast

At the time, TV sets were about 44,000 in the entire United States compared to 40 million radios, but that didn’t stop President Harry S. Truman from delivering his presidential address to a TV audience for the first time in 1947. It seemed he liked his TV time because every speech after that was televised.

Barack Obama – Twitter

It took decades for new tech to get in the hands of modern presidents and even still, they aren’t really allowed to have it. Obama is famously a loyal black berry user, although it seemed he almost became an Apple fan boy after a private meeting with Steve Jobs in 2007 where he was quoted as saying ‘‘ If It was legal, I would buy a boatload of Apple stock, This thing is going to be really big’’ after taking a sneak peak at the iPhone. (He was right, stock today would be worth about 8x more now) Although he isn’t allowed to have an iPhone for security reasons, he borrows his staffs to tweet to his 69.8 million followers… and you know his selfie game is strong.

Donald Trump – Twitter

Love him or hate him, no president in history has ever form such a tighter bond with the Social Media platform. We'd explain in detail but we're sure you've heard by now.

Learn More:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/the-first-wired-president/?_r=1

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hayes-has-first-phone-installed-in-white-house

http://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/first-white-house-speech-airs-on-tv-october-5-1947-043100

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