The first U.S. president to use a telephone was Rutherford B. Hayes. He had the first telephone installed in the White House on May 10, 1877, just about 14 months after Alexander Graham Bell's invention was patented. The phone was initially installed in the telegraph room of the Executive Mansion (now known as the White House), and its number was simply "1." However, Hayes rarely used the telephone because there were very few other phones in Washington, and initially, it could only be reached from the Treasury Department nearby
. More than 50 years later, President Herbert Hoover was the first to have a telephone installed at his desk in the Oval Office, marking a significant expansion in presidential telephone use
