Ah, the days before microphones. This 1921 article described how “not a dozen men have ever heard a Presidential inaugural address.” That same year, Warren Harding became the first president with loudspeakers at his inauguration.

The people around him do not hear him. The newspaper men have seats nearer than the other invited guests on the platform, but they catch only a detatched word or sentence here or there. Down at their feet, below the platform, they see men with their hands at their ears, straining to catch a word and then giving it up. Perhaps the Vice President and some of the foreign Ambassadors hear the speech, but nobody else does. Having attended every inauguration since and including that of McKinley, I feel sure of my ground in saying that not a dozen men have ever heard a Presidential inaugural address.

As opposed to today, when we can hear presidential inaugurations but often wish we hadn’t.

The 1921 article also noted that the vice president was inaugurated in the Senate chamber, not on the Capitol steps as occurs today. That changed in 1937, during the second inaugural of Franklin D. Roosevelt with Vice President John Nance Garner.

False Splendor of Past Inaugurals

Published: Sunday, January 23, 1921