Presidential call button
button in the Oval Office used by the president to call aides
An approximately 9 by 3 in (20 by 8 cm) wooden box housing a call button is present on the Oval Office desk in the Oval Office of the White House. This call button, also referred to as a valet button, is used to call aides to the President for various reasons. The modern version of the call button has been present since at least the George W. Bush presidency. Earlier versions of presidential call bells and buzzers have existed since the early 1800s.
History
Past call buttons and buzzers
Before the mid-1800s, a series of call bells was installed in the White House and used as a form of staff communication. This system was followed by a battery operated device, used by the President, that could be used to call on staff. The White House was wired for electricity in 1891 allowing for simple wired call-buttons.
An 1881 letter written by White House disbursing agent William H. Crook refers to an electric bell attached to president James Garfield's desk.
Betty C. Monkman notes in The White House: Its Historic Furnishings & First Families that the Treaty table, also known as the Grant Cabinet table, has the remains of a call button system still attached to it, but does not state when this system was used.
In the 1889 Publication Historic Homes in Washington; its noted men and women by Mary S. Lockwood a story is told about Benjamin Harrison's grandson pushing a call button on the President's desk.
“Presidential call button” enters the record as button in the Oval Office used by the president to call aides. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Presidential, call and button can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q105005137. The first chronological checks are 1891, 1881 and 1889.
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This entry incorporates text from “Presidential call button” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.