1809: The inaugural address by James Madison, the fourth president, was published in newspapers following his swearing-in;

1845: Telegraph inventor Samuel Morse actually sat near James Polk, the eleventh president, and telegraphed news of the inauguration as it transpired;

1857: Fifteenth President James Buchanan’s inauguration was the first to be photographed;

1897: The inauguration of William McKinley, the twenty-fifth president, was recorded by both silent motion pictures and by phonograph;

1921: Twenty-ninth President Warren G. Harding was the first to have his inaugural address electronically amplified;

1925: The inauguration of Calvin Coolidge, the thirtieth president, was the first to be broadcast live on the radio;

1929: Thirty-first President Herbert Hoover’s inaugural speech was the first to be filmed for a “talking newsreel”;

1949: Thirty-third President Harry Truman was the first to have his inauguration broadcast live on television. As the Truman Library points out on its website, “The 1949 Inauguration...was estimated to have been viewed by 10 million Americans. More persons watched President Truman’s Inauguration than ever before had seen a single event. It also was more than the total of all persons witnessing all previous Presidential Inaugurations.”

1997: The second inauguration of President Bill Clinton, the forty-second president, was the first to be available for live viewing on the Internet.

While Harry Truman’s inauguration was the first to be televised in 1949, no kinescopes of that broadcast seem to exist, (although newsreel film coverage does). Let’s take a look at some clips of significant early television coverage from three inaugurations: Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953, John F. Kennedy in 1961, and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. [next]