Function of Next Administration
date: label: date made
content: 1908
name: label: associated person
content: Taft, William H.
notes: label: Description
content: Candidate debates were not part of presidential campaigns until 1960, but the election of 1908 offered a possible prototype for the future. In the final months of the 1908 campaign, William Jennings Bryan and William Howard Taft reached voters across the country through short speeches recorded on flat disks or wax cylinders, the first time presidential candidates spoke through commercial recordings. The recordings were made not before live audiences, but in the candidates’ homes. Taft largely read excerpts from earlier campaign speeches while Bryan, a more experienced public speaker than Taft, prepared new material for listeners. Stores, opera houses, and other public venues used the recordings to stage mock debates. They played the speeches with mannequins of Bryan and Taft facing off, sometimes drawing hundreds of listeners. Phonograph dealers were encouraged to market the recordings with slogans like “Don’t vote until you hear both sides” and “Joint Debate Bryan and Taft/ Come In and Hear It.” The recordings sold well, a Kansas City newspaper reporting, “they make a strong and lasting impression on the mind.” Bryan, recognized as one of the greatest orators of his day, outsold Taft. But Taft won the election and some of his recordings were rebranded as “a Record made by the President of the United States.” One of Bryan’s recordings had a somewhat odder fate. In 1912 some Harvard students at a dance, finding themselves short of records, put one of his “sonorous” speeches on the phonograph and, according to the Washington Post “did their dips with precision” as Bryan’s voice “arose to lofty heights.” Three companies produced campaign recordings in 1908. Edison’s National Phonograph Company's recordings sold for 35 cents.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Political History: Political History, Campaign Collection
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PL.260952.04
label: catalog number
content: 260952.04
label: accession number
content: 260952
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Cylinder Recording