In 2008 while campaigning with presidential candidate Barack Obama during the general election, Joe Biden made a statement most considered a gaffe, saying that during the Great Depression Franklin Roosevelt went on television to tell the viewers what is going on. It turned out Biden was right: Governor Roosevelt of New York did appear on the TV for the few viewers who had sets back then. And after taking office, Roosevelt continued his appearances.

On this day, April 30, in 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first president of the United States to appear on television. The setting was the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. The National Broadcasting Company television network broadcast the president’s remarks at the fair’s opening as their first ever telecast.

Mostly, Roosevelt preferred to stick with radio. He was more comfortable giving fireside chats when he could not been seen confined to a wheelchair. The larger population seemed equally uninterested in the new medium: although the World’s Fair proclaimed in as part of the “world of tomorrow”, television’s popularity did not pick up until the early 1950s.