Alexander Bell’s great invention was just gaining momentum. Slightly more than a year passed since Bell gave the famous demonstration in which he said “Come here, Mr. Watson, I need to see you,” and the Bell telephone company had not yet formed, but President Rutherford B. Hayes was interested enough in the device to have it placed in the White House on a trial basis.

On this day, May 10, in 1877 Rutherford B. Hayes became the first president to have a phone in the white house. The local telephone exchange was just that — local — and if Bell, from thirteen miles away, wanted to reach the president, he could just dial “1.”

Another half century would pass before the spread of telephones warranted president Herbert Hoover to install one at his desk in the Oval Office. In 1963 another line was installed for a “red telephone” that connected Washington straight to Moscow. After a series of misunderstandings during the Cuban Missile Crisis almost led Khrushchev and Kennedy into nuclear war,  a more straightforward means of communication was needed to avoid future misunderstandings of that sort.