9 Most Tech-Savvy Presidents
Celebrate President's Day with our votes on the best technological milestones ushered in by our nation's leaders.
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The President of the United States has a lot of really important jobs, but one of the more interesting jobs is to be a cheerleader for the economy. In that role, Presidents have often appeared conspicuously using new technology to show how innovative and important it is to the American economy. Teddy Roosevelt flew in one of the Wright Brothers' early planes (after leaving office). William McKinley was the first in a car.
It is one thing to show off a technology so you can pump the economy. It is another thing entirely to implement that technology into your government. The relationship between technology and the US government has always been a little uneven. The US put a man on the moon. That's the good side. On the bad side, there are the rumors that many US government departments are still running Windows 98. We've seen some technologies adopted quickly by the government, and some taking a long time. Presidents were driving in cars before General Motors was even founded, but it took more than 30 years and a World War to get POTUS in an airplane.
In honor of President's Day weekend we're looking at major IT milestones, and which President was in office when the government adopted that technology. You can get a real handle on which Presidents were forward thinking, or which technologies really captured the imagination of the country, by how long it took the US government to put it to use.
I won't ruin it with spoilers, but I bet you'd never guess who was the most forward-thinking President of the bunch. In fact, I bet you wouldn't name him unless I gave you at least 40 guesses. Let's just say he’s got a very special phone number.
You'll also be surprised by the first PC in the White House, who really launched the space race, and who sent the first email. Check out the list of your favorite technologies, and which Presidents put them to use. Consider which ones surprise you most. And then take a guess on the near-horizon technologies that future Presidents will put to use in the Oval Office. Tell us all about it in the comments section below.
It may not seem like a big deal now, but the telegraph was the first way to send messages across the country in a flash. The telegraph was invented around 17 years before a President used it. But Abraham Lincoln modernized communications in the government when he forced its members to use the telegraph. Before Lincoln, if someone in the government needed to send a telegram that person would walk over to a public telegraph office just like anyone else. By 1865, the telegraph would be one of the major reasons (along with railroads and manufacturing) that the North won the Civil War.
Only a year after Alexander Graham Bell spoke the first words on the phone to Mr. Watson, Rutherford B. Hayes installed a phone in the White House. It was a direct line to the Treasury. The phone number was 1. Just the number 1. I guess that was the first "red phone" in the White House, because the country was in significant debt after the Civil War. President Obama erroneously quoted Hayes as not liking the phone. But Hayes was way ahead of the times.
It is entirely debatable which computer you want to crown as the first electronic computer. Many credit ENIAC, but other computers date back to the 1930s. I'm picking the Harvard Mark I, which was put into use for the Navy in 1944. That means FDR was the first sitting President when the government used a computer. Because of FDR's long tenure, chances are if you prefer an earlier machine, you will still find FDR was in office.
This one is tough to call, but we're going to go with Harry Truman. FDR made remarks at the World's Fair in New York in 1939 that were broadcast on TVs on the fairgrounds. But the first over-the-air TV broadcast by a President was by Truman in 1947. What took so long? Even when Truman made his broadcast, there were only about 44,000 TVs in America.
While many give JFK credit for starting the space race with his guarantee to put a man on the moon, it was Eisenhower's quick response to Sputnik -- Explorer I -- that truly got it off the ground. While it only broadcast for four hours, the mission was the first to discover the Van Allen radiation belt. Eisenhower began the satellite program four years before Explorer I successfully launched in 1958.
It is widely agreed that the first personal computer in the White House was the Xerox Alto during Richard Nixon's term. It is highly unlikely he used it, however. Even Bill Clinton and George Bush did not use computers. President Obama doesn't even have one on his desk (though he uses one in other offices).
Bill Clinton famously didn't use email for security reasons (though I'm sure he used it at various points socially) leaving George W. Bush to be the first one to officially use it. Though, as previously noted, the Oval Office still doesn't contain a computer, so email is not a major part of any President's day it seems.
President Obama famously fought to keep his BlackBerry. It also recently became news that he gave a thumbs up on an iPhone prototype. I can only assume that in addition to using the first smartphone, he took the first selfie, sent the first text, and probably was the first to play Candy Crush Saga in the office, too.
OK, Al Gore didn't really invent the Internet. He wasn't even a President. (Well, according to the Supreme Court he wasn't.) But there is no better way to celebrate Presidents and technology than with the most famous line about technology uttered by a potential President ever. For the record, Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet, was invented during the Johnson administration and turned on early in the Nixon administration.
What technology will we see the future Presidents debut? Will Presidents be driven by Google Cars or protected by robots? Did you have any idea Rutherford B. Hayes was the most tech-forward President of the US? Tell us your favorites -- and any we missed -- in the comments section below.
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