Future to the older ones 3

Old stories



President Eisenhower with Dr. King, Bunche & other important men

Not even the White House could escape the ubiquity of elevator music. The Eisenhower administration had Muzak wired into the residence in 1953. That’s not Muzak’s only connection to the Commander in Chief though; Lyndon B. Johnson owned an Austin franchise in the 1950s.


Eisenhower Adds Some Color

Eisenhower’s administration had non-Muzak triumphs, too. In 1958, he became the first American president broadcast in color on television. The president and vice-president of NBC were on hand to help Eisenhower inaugurate NBC’s new broadcasting center. Eisenhower was amazed by his tour of the facility, calling it “like nothing else so much in my mind as the radar room in a big battleship or some other complex thing that really is entirely beyond my comprehension but is still capable of exciting my wonderment.”

President Carter

The office computer revolution began in 1978 during the Carter administration. According to White House historians, initial uses for the new automated system included “assembling databases, tracking correspondence, developing a press release system, and compiling issues and concerns of Congress.” By the 1980s, Ronald Reagan’s staff were using personal computers, although he preferred to do things the old-fashioned way with handwritten notes.


Bill Clinton was the first president to send email, though he didn’t use it often during his term. He would later joke that he “sent a grand total of two emails as president, one to our troops in the Adriatic, and one to John Glenn when he was 77 years old in outer space. I figured it was OK if Congress subpoenaed those.”