Weird Island

38. FIRSTS: The First Presidential Phone Call

Episode Summary

The first presidential phone call took place in Rhode Island, when Alexander Graham Bell called 19th President Rutherford B. Hayes as he attended a clambake at Rocky Point Park. To Visit: Rocky Point Ave. | Nothing to see but a sign, but you can stand where the first Presidential phone call took place, if that’s a thing you want to do.

Episode Notes

The first presidential phone call took place in Rhode Island, when Alexander Graham Bell called 19th President Rutherford B. Hayes as he attended a clambake at Rocky Point Park.

To Visit: Rocky Point Ave. | Nothing to see but a sign, but you can stand where the first Presidential phone call took place, if that’s a thing you want to do.

Episode Source Material:

Episode Transcription

Click - Please hold for the President. Click
Have you ever thought about what a Presidential phone call might sound like? It’s probably nothing like the calls you’re making on a daily basis. According to Insider, presidential phone calls are painstakingly planned and coordinated. Before a call, the president is presented with a file that includes confidential information about the agenda and a complete profile of the person who is on the other line. This could include details about their personality, whether or not they like small talk, details about their family and any recent illnesses. And then the call begins with some sort of countdown and the famous introduction: “Please hold for the president.” During the call, a team of assistants and translators are on hand, and afterwards a summary is written that will drive media coverage.
But this is a process that has changed and developed in the 144 years since the very first presidential phone call was made. And today, I’m here to tell you exactly what the first call with a president sounded like. Spoiler alert, it was pretty different from what I just described.
I’m Sara, and you’re listening to Weird Island. Each week, I’ll be telling you about the strangest stories I can dig up from my tiny, little state of Rhode Island. This week, I’m telling you about the very first presidential phone call. And you should care about it because it was made right here in Rhode Island at Rocky Point Park.
About 12 years after the end of the Civil war, on June 28, 1877,crowds gathered at Rocky Point Park for day three of a four day celebration of veterans that would include a clambake, speeches, cannon salutes, fireworks and parades. That day, the Mayor of Providence gave an address, and when he finished speaking, an honored guest of the Grand Army of the Republic stood up. It was the 19th president of the United States, Rutherford B. Hayes, who had traveled to Rhode Island to speak before the gathering of Civil War veterans - and eat some clams, presumably. But he would also take part in another historic demonstration.
As the Mayor of Providence returned to his seat, the President was led away to a “parlor” where a man named Frederick A. Gower had set up a new device. One that the new president had never seen before. It was an early telephone.
On the other end of the line, 13 miles away in the City Hotel in Providence, was 30 year old Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the odd-looking device. Frederick Gower asked the President to place a piece of the device, which was described by the Providence Journal as resembling “a rather large-sized bobbin,” against one ear, and when he did, Gower spoke into the phone, “Prof. Bell, I have the honor to present to you the President of the United States, who is listening at the other telephone; do you understand?”
Bell did understand, and he replied, “Mr. President, I am duly sensible of the great honor conferred upon me in this for the first time presenting the speaking telephone to the attention of the President of the United States. I am located in one of the parlors of the City Hotel, in Providence. I am speaking to you through thirteen miles of wire, without the use of any galvanic current on the line.”
As Bell spoke, the President began smiling wider and wider, and wonder shone in his eyes. He took the receiver from his ear, looked at it, and remarked, “That is wonderful.”
As the president beamed at the phone, Bell continued speaking: “I hope that you understand distinctly what I say, and I shall be very glad to hear something from you in reply, if you please.”
President Hayes' response would be the first words spoken by a president over the phone. The problem was, he did not distinctly hear what Bell was saying. He would later admit that while he could understand some words very well, he couldn’t catch full sentences.
So the first words spoken by a president on the phone were “Please speak a little more slowly.”
Why did the first Presidential telephone call happen at Rocky Point Park? I’m actually not sure. Maybe just opportunity with the president being there. And much of the history of the telephone is relatively local. Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1847, but would spend some of the most critical times of his life in Boston. And he would later call Boston “the home of the telephone.”
But the history of the telephone isn’t very straightforward. And my understanding of this history isn’t made better by the fact that I do not understand how telephones work. Not modern phones, not early mechanical telephones. Not electrical telephones. Phones are magical devices and that’s probably how it will always be for me. But here’s my heavily summarized history of the telephone.
So, the earliest phones were mechanical. Sounds were transmitted by vibrations along a pipe or wire - like a tin can telephone you might have made as a child. But there are limitations to mechanical devices. So beginning in the early 1800s, people began exploring the use of electricity in transmitting sounds and messages. The telegraph was the first electrical telecommunications system - and it’s essentially the original text message. We’re all most familiar with Samuel Morse and his Morse code, which was tapped out in a series of long and short strokes that could be transmitted over long distances. Initially, these messages were physically put down on paper, until it became clear that operators could quickly and more efficiently interpret the long and short sounds instead of reading the dashes and dots on paper. Morse’s historic first telegraph message was sent in 1844, and it dramatically read, “What hath God wrought!” and the telegraph system spread across America after that, leading to the first transcontinental telegraph line being laid by Western Union in 1861. I’m not going to say the telegraph’s dominance was short-lived, because it would continue to be used for some time. But it wasn’t very long after this that the telephone was invented.
Here’s where things get pretty complicated, because we all know that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. But it’s not as straightforward as we’ve been led to believe.
Today, there are actually a handful of people who are credited with the invention of the telephone. We know Alexander Graham Bell’s name because he was the first to patent the device to transmit voice, but there were others who came before him who were instrumental in the development of the phone, and there was even another man who was working in parallel with Bell, who submitted a patent on the exact same day Bell’s patent was filed. That other man was Elisha Gray, and he and Bell submitted patents for very similar devices.
It’s still unclear today what happened there. Did Bell and Gray independently invent the telephone? Was plagiarism involved? Fraud? Bribery? Ultimately, it was Bell’s application that was approved on March 7, 1876 - just a year before that first Presidential phone call - and the name Alexander Graham Bell went down in the history books.
Bell’s historic first phone call was made just three days later, on March 10, 1876 - only 15 years after that transcontinental telegraph line was laid.
Eight months after that first call, Gray would write, “it only creates interest in scientific circles, and, as a scientific toy…so its commercial value will be limited.” But that following year, Bell and his backers founded the Bell Telephone Company, which would later become the American Telephone and Telegraph Company - known today as AT&T.
Of course, that isn’t the end of the history of the telephone - just the beginning, as the device continued to be improved. And like I mentioned, much of Bell’s work continued to be local. Actually, there’s another little known Rhode Island connection to Bell’s early work. A group of scientists and students at Brown University became aware of Bell’s patent and began their own experiments. Eli Whitney Blake, a professor of physics, and relative of Eli Whitney, encouraged the exploration. Students strung wire between their rooms and were able to converse. They explored improvements to the receiver. And when Bell heard of these experiments, he reacted pretty negatively. That was, until he learned that they had no desire to capitalize on their experiments. After that, he was willing to meet with them and share ideas, though he patronizingly referred to the group as “the experimenters.”
It’s suggested that this group of experimenters may have influenced the design of the receiver Bell used, which would become known as the Butter Stamp Receiver, and was likely the same design described in the Providence Journal as a rather large sized bobbin, though to be fair it was much smaller than the 10 lb receiver on Bell’s original telephone.
After that first Presidential phone call, in June of 1877, Rutherford B. Hayes became an early adopter of technology. He had the very first telephone installed in the White House, and the phone number was “1”. Just 1. You’re probably picturing a phone on the desk in the Oval Office, but it was actually installed in the telegraph room. And at that time, there were no operators or switchboards yet, so phone lines had to go directly from one phone to another, and the only other direct line went to the Treasury Department. He probably really didn’t use the phone much.
It would be another 50 years before Herbert Hoover moved the telephone into the Oval Office, turning the president’s desk into a command center and reshaping the way communication was done. Even then, that wouldn’t be a private line until 1993 when Clinton complained that anyone could pick up an extension and listen in on his calls.
Over the years the phone has become one of the most important tools at the President’s disposal.
And it all began with Rutherford B. Hayes' decision to take a chance on a new technology. Ironically, there’s a quote that has been misattributed to Hayes over the years regarding the telephone, and even President Obama referenced it in a 2012 speech about new sources of energy, like solar and wind. He said,
“There always have been folks who are the naysayers and don't believe in the future, and don't believe in trying to do things differently. One of my predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone, ‘It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?’ That's why he's not on Mount Rushmore because he’s looking backwards. He’s not looking forwards. He’s explaining why we can't do something, instead of why we can do something.”
This is really wild, because not only did Hayes bring the first phone to the White House, he was also the first president to use a typewriter, so he was really on the forefront of adopting new technology. Sources have tried to determine where this quote came from and why it has become connected to Hayes, but it’s unclear. The earliest appearances of the quote connected it to Ulysses S. Grant before it became tied to Hayes, but even that connection is tenuous. With the internet, information can be repeated over and over until it appears to be fact. I mean, the internet is a great invention, but I don’t know why anyone would ever want to use it.
Thanks for listening! As always, all episodes are written and researched by me, Sara Corben. If you liked this episode, I would love it if you could share it with your family or friends, or you can send me a note at Weird Rhode Island at Gmail.com. And if there’s a topic you’d really like to hear about, let me know! See you next week as we dig up more stories about all things weird and wonderful in the little state of Rhode Island. Until next time!