Cold Open

It’s May 10th, 1877, at the White House in Washington, DC.

President Rutherford B. Hayes sighs as he opens and closes a succession of doors along a corridor, searching for the one he needs. Hayes has only been president of the United States for two months, and he’s still getting used to the layout of the White House. Today, he’s been asked to attend a special ceremony in the telegraph room—but since President Hayes has never been there, he doesn’t know where the ceremony is to take place.

Finally, Hayes opens a door to a room where he finds a telegraph operator tapping out a message. But the telegraph operator isn’t working alone. On the other side of the room is a small group of men clustered around a table with an unusual machine on it. They fall silent as Hayes enters, and one of them invites him to take a seat by the new machine.

President Hayes sits and eyes the contraption with a puzzled expression. It’s a metal horn bolted onto a piece of wood with wires trailing from it. An aide reveals that it’s called a telephone. It’s a new invention, only patented last year, and the White House is one of the first places in the country to get one.

The aide flicks a switch and invites President Hayes to speak into the machine. Hayes clears his throat before uttering a few words, introducing himself as the President of the United States. Then, he asks the aide what he needs to do to send the message. But the aide replies with a smile that the message was already transmitted the instant the president spoke. He hands President Hayes a small speaker attached to a wire, gesturing that he should hold it up to his ear.

At first, President Hayes hears only an electrical buzz. But after a few moments, a ghostly voice answers that he can hear the president. Hayes’s face lights up in a smile, realizing right away that this brand-new technology has the potential to revolutionize not just the workings of government, but the way people communicate all over the world.

President Rutherford B. Hayes’s first phone call doesn’t transmit his voice very far. The White House is only connected to one other phone across the street at the Treasury Department. But this phone line is just the start of what will become a national and then international network. Subsequent American leaders will use the new invention to speak with allies and opponents alike, and their words will even be carried into space: a far cry from the first telephone call from the White House that covered just a few hundred yards on May 10th, 1877.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is May 10th, 1877: The First Phone Call from the White House.

Act One

It’s April 1944, in Washington, DC; sixty-seven years after President Rutherford B. Hayes telephoned the Treasury Department from the White House.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, the now-current President of the United States, glances up from his desk to check that the doors to the Oval Office are closed. Satisfied that he’s alone, Roosevelt lifts a telephone and waits for the operator to put a call through. As the President for the last eleven years, Roosevelt has made thousands of phone calls from the White House—but few of them have been as important as this one. With a click, Roosevelt hears his call connect, and then, he hears the gruff voice of America’s most important ally in World War Two: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

When President Hayes made his first call from the White House in 1877, only a handful of telephones existed in the entire country. But those numbers quickly increased. And after President Herbert Hoover had a telephone installed on his Oval Office desk in 1929, phone calls became the routine method by which American presidents contacted other political leaders around the country - and beyond.

Three years ago, though, the ability of American leaders to communicate speedily became even more important. After the United States entered World War Two in 1941, President Roosevelt had to coordinate the country’s war efforts from the White House. At first, he talked with his generals and overseas Allies through so-called scrambler telephones—but the US military learned that a German listening station on the Dutch coast could intercept and decode calls made from scrambler phones, so they were then used only sparingly. But Roosevelt still needed to talk directly to his Allies, so American engineers developed a new, highly secure phone line called SIGSALY. SIGSALY system used 50 tons of electronic equipment to encrypt voices by mixing them with randomly generated white noise. Only another SIGSALY unit with the correct code in settings, played at the exact same time could convert the encrypted signal back into an intelligible conversation. This morning, President Roosevelt is about to use the secure SIGSALY phone to discuss the most important wartime operation yet.

Once the call is connected, Roosevelt offers Churchill a friendly greeting. But he’s barely said hello before Churchill immediately begins complaining. He says that the American engineers who installed the SIGSALY phone in his underground bunker insisted that it be kept secret, so they fitted it in a tiny cupboard disguised as the prime minister’s personal toilet. Churchill can barely fit inside. President Roosevelt smiles at the Prime Minister’s grumbling—especially since the encrypted phone line makes Churchill sound a little like Donald Duck. But then Roosevelt quickly turns the conversation to the more important, confidential military matters. For the last year, British and American generals have been making plans to regain a foothold in Nazi-controlled Europe. Operation Overlord is a risky gamble that will see more than 100,000 Allied soldiers cross the English Channel and attempt to land on the heavily defended beaches of Normandy in France. Over the course of their encrypted conversation, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill iron out wrinkles in the plan and commit both their nations to ensuring the landings are a success.

Two months after this phone call, on D-day, June 6th, 1944, Operation Overlord is launched. Thanks in part to the ability of President Roosevelt to discuss the plans in a secure way with his British counterpart, the invasion of Normandy surprises their German enemy. And less than a year later, Germany surrenders to bring the war in Europe to an end. But Roosevelt’s secure SIGSALY phone system remains in use. To aid the ongoing war in the Pacific, SIGSALY terminals are installed in Hawaii, California, and Australia. A huge SIGSALY terminal is even placed aboard a US Navy vessel to give General Douglas MacArthur a fast-track to the White House as he island-hops across the Pacific to Japan. By the end of World War Two, more than 3,000 top-secret military conversation and conferences will have taken place over the SIGSALY phone line—and after the war, the American engineers will discover that enemy intelligence operatives did not manage to decipher a single call.

In the aftermath of World War Two, American presidents will continue to use the telephone as a secure and direct method of communicating with other leaders—only this time, the conversations won’t be just restricted to allies. The telephone will also prove to be a useful way to prevent the escalation of tension between America and its enemies, ensuring that the world won’t slip into another, even more destructive war.

Act Two

It’s the morning of October 16th, 1962 at the White House, seventeen years after the end of World War Two.

President John F. Kennedy hunches over his desk, a forgotten cup of coffee going cold beside him as he pours over a selection of photographs he’s just been given by his national security adviser.

Since the end of World War Two, the United States has found itself on a new kind of battleground. The Cold War has pitted America against the USSR in a struggle for global supremacy—but since both countries have nuclear weapons, direct fighting between the two could lead to unimaginable catastrophe. Instead, the two sides have engaged in indirect, proxy conflicts by supporting allies around the world: in Eastern Europe, in Korea, and in Vietnam. But one Soviet ally, Cuba, is positioned only a hundred miles from the coast of Florida. President Kennedy watches developments in Cuba closely—and two days ago, an American reconnaissance plane came back with photographs of some worrying construction work on the island, a new Soviet missile base.

That’s bad news for American national security because nuclear missiles fired from Cuba could target almost anywhere in the United States.

The discovery of these missiles sparks a crisis in Washington. President Kennedy summons the Soviet ambassador, who insists that the USSR has no intention of attacking America. But several of Kennedy’s advisers think that the USSR is being dishonest. The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously recommend that American troops begin a full-scale invasion of Cuba. But that would almost certainly drag the island’s ally, the USSR into the conflict too, perhaps sparking World War Three.

So, over the next ten days, the American threat level is raised, nuclear-armed B-52 bombers are in the air constantly, and people around the world prepare themselves for possible Armageddon.

But then the Soviets make the first diplomatic move to end the crisis. And it comes from an unexpected source. A KGB operative in Washington approaches an American television journalist who agrees to act as an intermediary. President Kennedy responds by passing a message to Cuba agreeing to a diplomatic solution, but Kennedy asks the Brazilian government to deliver it. Hours later, the White House receives a response from Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, though it takes time for the Americans to translate the telegram. And by the time Kennedy has it in his hands, a second and contradictory telegram has been received from Moscow.

Despite this confusion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, as this series of events come to be known, ends in a diplomatic agreement. The Soviets withdraw their missiles in exchange for the US removing its own nuclear missiles from Italy and Turkey. And once the dust has settled, President Kennedy decides that the world must never come so close to nuclear war again. He concludes that the crisis escalated so dangerously in part because there was no way for him to talk directly to the Soviet leadership.

Thanks to Kennedy’s determination, a new method of communication between these Cold War rivals is created: a hotline between Washington and Moscow. President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev both agree to install encrypted teletype machines with an open line between them that’s manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This way, during times of emergency, secure messages between the two countries’ leaders can be transmitted within minutes if not seconds.

The hotline is first used just three months after its installation - but not by President Kennedy. He is assassinated in November 1963, and it falls to the new President Lyndon B. Johnson to use the secure hotline to inform Moscow of Kennedy’s death. Johnson’s message reassures the USSR that the American government is still functioning and that the Soviet Union has no need to worry about the military chain of command being threatened.

Four years later, President Johnson picks up the phone and dictates a second message for his counterpart in Moscow. This time, President Johnson informs the USSR that the United States is deploying military planes to the Mediterranean. Since the USSR might view this movement as a threat, President Johnson wants to explain that the American planes are there only to prevent the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab states from spreading.

And thanks to the hotline, this war in the Middle East does not become a point of contention in the broader Cold War. But the rivalry between superpowers will continue, and within two years of the Six-Day War, another presidential phone call will make history—only this time, the Americans will use it not to calm tensions with the Soviets, but to prove their superiority in a new frontier.

Act Three

It’s July 20th, 1969 in the White House, two years after the Washington-Moscow hotline was used to calm tensions during the Six-Day War.

The new U.S. President Richard Nixon picks up the telephone on his desk and listens in as the White House operator patches him through to NASA mission control in Houston, Texas. But that’s not the final destination of the call. Technicians in Houston hook up Nixon’s phone line to their own communications systems, allowing the president to speak with astronauts thousands of miles above the Earth.

An hour ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the Moon. It’s not just an incredible technological achievement—it’s a great propaganda victory for the United States too, which has leapfrogged the USSR in the space race. Now, President Nixon is keen to mark America’s success by speaking to the astronauts directly—and he knows his words will be heard through television sets and radios around the world.

After a few moments of silence, Nixon hears the voice of NASA’s flight controller telling him to go ahead. With a broad grin on his face, President Nixon begins talking to the men on the Moon.

NIXON: "Hello Neil and Buzz, I am talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House, and this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made from the White House. I just can't tell you how proud we all are of what you have done. For every American, this has to be the proudest day of our lives, and for people all over the world I am sure that they, too, join with Americans in recognizing what an immense feat this is."

President Nixon has been told that the astronauts have limited time on the Moon to complete all their work, so he keeps his call short. He chats with Neil for two minutes, but he also makes sure he gets his main point across to the people listening in around the globe: that the Moon landing is an American achievement on behalf of the whole world.

Nixon’s historic words are transmitted across more than 200,000 miles before they reach the astronauts on the moon. It’s a staggering distance considering that less than a century earlier, the phone line from the White House stretched only a few hundred yards to the Treasury Department, allowing President Rutherford B. Hayes to place his own historic call—the first one ever made from the White House on May 10th, 1877.

Outro

Next on History Daily. May 13th, 1981. Pope John Paul II is shot in a mysterious assassination plot with potential ties to the KGB.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mollie Baack

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Scott Reeves.

Edited by Dorian Merina.

Managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.