Question: Which president installed the first phone in the White House?
Answer: Rutherford B. Hayes, on May 19, 1877, just eight years after the telephone was invented. The phone number was “1,” and it rarely rang, since the Treasury Department possessed the only other direct phone line to the White House at that time. It wasn’t until Herbert Hoover became president over 50 years later that a telephone was installed in the Oval Office.
