On This Day in Telephone History May 10TH 1877 the White House gets its First Telephone. President Rutherford B. Hayes has the White House’s first telephone installed in the mansion’s telegraph room. The Treasury Department possessed the only other direct phone line to the White House at that time. The White House phone number was “1.” Phone service was in its infancy in 1877 and it would be more than 50 years until the first telephone line was installed in the Oval Office.
