The Telephone Is a Great Invention, But Who Would Ever Want to Use One?
Not Rutherford B. Hayes — and no evidence for anyone else eitherUnknownAnonymous · told about Ulysses S. Grant from 1939, and about Hayes only from 1982
Quote Investigator ↗ is direct about it: QI “has been unable to locate any compelling evidence that Hayes made that skeptical remark about the telephone,” and concludes that it “has not yet located solid evidence connecting the quotation to any prominent individual.” The anecdote first turns up in 1939, in an after-dinner speech, and it is about Ulysses S. Grant. It only becomes Hayes’s in 1982, in a book about microcomputers that gives no source and sets the scene in 1876 — a year when Hayes was not yet president.
“The Telephone Is a Great Invention, But Who Would Ever Want to Use One?” not Rutherford B. Hayes. Quote Investigator finds no compelling evidence that Hayes said it, and no solid evidence connecting the quotation to any prominent individual. The earliest instance QI locates is a speech by Howard Pew reported on 7 December 1939, which told the story about Ulysses S. Grant. It was moved to Hayes in Edward J. Lias's Future Mind (Little, Brown, 1982), p. 2, which cites no source and dates the scene to 1876 — a year before Hayes took office. Traced by Quotle.info, quotle.info/who-said/the-telephone-is-a-great-invention-but-who-would-ever-want/ · Verbatim: “That's an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?”
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Rutherford B. Hayes. Use the credit shown above instead.
Can you use it?
? We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.
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In context
Evoking the themes of change and doubt. Theme: "The Telephone Is a Great Invention, But Who Would Ever Want to Use One?". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Provenance
How the story got to Hayes
Earliest instance
Howard Pew, address to the Congress of American Industry, reported 7 December 1939
Who it was about then
Ulysses S. Grant, not Rutherford B. Hayes
First pinned on Hayes
Edward J. Lias, Future Mind (Little, Brown, 1982), p. 2
How it went everywhere
Cerf & Navasky, The Experts Speak (1984); Los Angeles Times, 2 October 1984
When President Rutherford B. Hayes was handed the first telephone for a trial conversation between Washington and Philadelphia in 1876, he had difficulty thinking of anything to say. After several sentences he disconnected the line and said, “That’s an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?”
Edward J. Lias, Future Mind, 1982, p. 2
The date in that paragraph cannot be right. Hayes became president in 1877, so there was no President Hayes in 1876 — and 1876 is the year that then got copied into The Experts Speak and out into the world. Wikiquote’s disputed entry ↗ adds two things: that Lias “did not footnote or in any other way cite a source for the quotation”, and that “the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center has found no primary-source evidence that Rutherford B. Hayes made the comment.”
7 December 1939 — the earliest instance Quote Investigator ↗ locates. Howard Pew, president of the Sun Oil Company, tells the Congress of American Industry that “President Ulysses S. Grant thought the telephone was ‘very remarkable’ but wondered ‘who in the world would ever want to use one of them.’” It is one of a set of stock examples in a speech about how nobody can foresee progress.
1949 to 1974 — the Grant ↗ version circulates as an anecdote: a 1949 Virginia newspaper column by George Peck, The Rotarian in February 1950, and Antony Fisher’s Must History Repeat Itself? in 1974. Nobody in that chain offers a source; it is passed along as a good story, per QI ↗.
1982 — Edward J. Lias’s Future Mind transfers it to Hayes, adds a Washington-to-Philadelphia setting and the year 1876, and cites nothing. Wikiquote ↗ records that the Hayes Presidential Center found no primary-source evidence for it.
1984 to 2012 — Cerf and Navasky put the Hayes version in The Experts Speak, sourcing it to a 1983 computer almanac rather than to anything of Hayes’s; the Los Angeles Times reprints it on 2 October 1984; Ronald Reagan works it into a joke in 1985; and in 2012 President Obama used it in a speech, which is what sent QI ↗ back to the record. Wikiquote ↗ cites a Washington Post fact-check of 16 March 2012 on the same question.
We assert no rights status. There is no established author and no established source work — that is the whole finding of this page — so there is nothing to date a copyright term from. The printed versions we can name (1939 onward) are all after the 1931 United States public-domain threshold. Do not treat this sentence as a public-domain presidential quotation; it is not documented as a presidential quotation at all.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Two presidents, neither of them documented
This is a stock anecdote about failing to see the future, and it has had two owners. Both were assigned to it long after the fact, and neither assignment comes with a source.
✕
The whole lineRutherford B. Hayes Misattributed
Quote Investigator ↗: QI “has been unable to locate any compelling evidence that Hayes made that skeptical remark.” Wikiquote ↗ files it as Disputed and records that the Hayes Presidential Center “has found no primary-source evidence” for it.
✕
The whole lineUlysses S. Grant Misattributed
The story’s first owner, from 1939 to 1982. QI ↗ finds “the attachment of the saying to Grant also appears to be unsupported” — and Grant had left the White House in 1877, so the 1939 speech was already describing an event decades old and unrecorded.
~
Where it entered print as Hayes’sEdward J. Lias, Future Mind (1982) Earliest in print, as Hayes
The book gives a setting and a date and no citation. Wikiquote ↗ notes that Lias “did not footnote or in any other way cite a source”, and that his 1876 date is impossible: Hayes was president from 1877.
~
Who spread itChristopher Cerf and Victor Navasky Popularizers, not authors
The Experts Speak (1984) printed the Hayes version with a source note pointing only at a 1983 computer almanac; a Los Angeles Times column of 2 October 1984 ↗ reprinted it, and it has been in general circulation ever since.
✓Nobody is documented saying this. The best-evidenced fact in the whole story is the opposite one: Wikiquote’s disputed entry ↗ records that Hayes’s “well documented experience with the telephone occurred in 1877 while Hayes was in Rhode Island”, and that the Providence Journal of 29 June 1877 reported his words during the demonstration as “That is wonderful!”
Context
Why we keep needing a president who got it wrong
The story has a job to do, and it does not much matter who fills the role. Howard Pew told it in 1939 to an audience of manufacturers, in a run of examples — Washington could not be bothered to watch Fitch’s steamboat, Napoleon could not “see the submarine”, Daniel Webster thought frost would stop the trains — all making the single point that expert judgement about new technology is worthless. Whether the president in the anecdote was Grant or Hayes was never the part anybody checked.
That is also why the 1876 date survived. It was wrong when Lias printed it in 1982, wrong when The Experts Speak repeated it in 1984, and still wrong when it was quoted from a podium in 2012 — because a date inside a good anecdote is decoration, not evidence. Hayes ↗ took office in March 1877.
The anecdote survived three transfers, two presidents and an impossible date. Nobody checked, because nobody needed it to be true.
What Hayes and the telephone actually have to do with each other
We could not open the 1877 newspaper ourselves — the archives that hold it are behind subscription walls this project cannot reach — so this is reported at one remove. Wikiquote’s disputed entry ↗ states that Hayes’s “well documented experience with the telephone occurred in 1877 while Hayes was in Rhode Island”, and, citing a Washington Post fact-check of 16 March 2012, that the Providence Journal of 29 June 1877 reported his reaction as “That is wonderful!” and that he had a telephone installed only months later.
Treat that as a lead rather than as a finding. What this page asserts is narrower and better supported: that no source places the sceptical remark in Hayes’s mouth, that the story was told about a different president for forty-three years before it was told about him, and that the book which moved it cited nothing at all.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1822–1893 · 19th president of the United States, 1877–1881
Rutherford Birchard Hayes was a Cincinnati lawyer who defended refugee slaves in court, was wounded five times in the Union army, rose to brevet major general, served in Congress and as governor of Ohio, and became the 19th president of the United States after the most disputed election in the country’s history. He is a convenient owner for a story about short-sightedness precisely because most people know nothing else about him: the joke needs a president obscure enough that no one will object, and famous enough to be worth naming. It also needs a president in office when the telephone was new — which Hayes was, and Grant, the story’s original subject, was not.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented instance
Earliest documented, about Ulysses S. Grant, in an address by Howard Pew to the Congress of American Industry, reported in the Milwaukee Journal, 7 December 1939, 9. First attached to Rutherford B. Hayes in Edward J. Lias, Future Mind: The Microcomputer — New Medium, New Mental Environment (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), 2, which cites no source. Both traced in “Quote Origin: The Telephone Is a Great Invention, But Who Would Ever Want to Use One?” Quote Investigator, 16 March 2012.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The Telephone Is a Great Invention, But Who Would Ever Want to Use One?’?” Last verified 8 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-telephone-is-a-great-invention-but-who-would-ever-want/