On July 15, several weeks after the Republican-controlled US Congress had adjourned for the year and left much business unfinished, Truman took the unprecedented step of using his presidential nomination acceptance speech to call both houses back into session. He delivered the speech under trying circumstances. With no air conditioning, delegates sweltered in the Philadelphia convention hall's oven-like atmosphere. When Truman finally stepped before the cameras in the first televised Democratic convention in 1948, organizers had lost all hope of controlling the schedule.