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Quiz Time! Take A Guess At These Presidential Tech Firsts

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

President Obama was at Stanford University last Friday where he headlined the first White House Cybersecurity Summit.

(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Because it's just too easy for hackers to figure out user names and passwords - like password.

(LAUGHTER)

OBAMA: Or 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 -7.

(LAUGHTER)

OBAMA: Those are some of my previous passwords.

(LAUGHTER)

OBAMA: I've changed them since then.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

President Obama has been called the first high-tech president - the first to use a smartphone, the first to use a Selfie Stick.

MCEVERS: That got us thinking - for this day on which we remember the birthday of the nation's first president - about some other presidential technology firsts. You can play along. We'll do this in the form of a quiz.

CORNISH: OK, so let's reach back. And, Kelly, who was the first president to broadcast an address from the White House by television? The first presidential White House address on TV.

It was Harry Truman in 1947 to a pretty small audience, though FDR had been seen on TV in 1939 at the World's Fair.

MCEVERS: OK. How about the first president in color?

CORNISH: Eisenhower, 1958?

MCEVERS: OK. Now how about radio? Audie, all of us at NPR should know. First presidential inaugural address over the radio - Calvin Coolidge, 1925.

And Warren Harding before him was the first president to have a radio installed in the White House. That was February, 1922, according to the Library of Congress.

CORNISH: OK, Kelly, lightning round. Who was the first to have electricity at the White House? It was Benjamin Harrison, 1891.

MCEVERS: OK.

CORNISH: What about the telephone? First president to have one installed? Rutherford B. Hayes.

MCEVERS: All right. Two more. The first photograph of a sitting U.S. president - William Henry Harrison, 1841. And a hard one to finish, Audie, first president to hold a patent. Ready for it? Abraham Lincoln. It was well before he was president. It was 1849. It was a device for boats for buoying vessels over shoals.

CORNISH: That's All Tech for this week. Thanks to all for playing presidential technology firsts. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Kelly McEvers is a two-time Peabody Award-winning journalist and former host of NPR's flagship newsmagazine, All Things Considered. She spent much of her career as an international correspondent, reporting from Asia, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East. She is the creator and host of the acclaimed Embedded podcast, a documentary show that goes to hard places to make sense of the news. She began her career as a newspaper reporter in Chicago.
Over two decades of journalism, Audie Cornish has become a recognized and trusted voice on the airwaves as co-host of NPR's flagship news program, All Things Considered.

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SOMOS CONNECTICUT es una iniciativa de Connecticut Public, la emisora local de NPR y PBS del estado, que busca elevar nuestras historias latinas y expandir programación que alza y informa nuestras comunidades latinas locales. Visita CTPublic.org/latino para más reportajes y recursos. Para noticias, suscríbase a nuestro boletín informativo en ctpublic.org/newsletters.

The independent journalism and non-commercial programming you rely on every day is in danger.

If you’re reading this, you believe in trusted journalism and in learning without paywalls. You value access to educational content kids love and enriching cultural programming.

Now all of that is at risk.

Federal funding for public media is under threat and if it goes, the impact to our communities will be devastating.

Together, we can defend it. It’s time to protect what matters.

Your voice has protected public media before. Now, it’s needed again. Learn how you can protect the news and programming you depend on.