“Of course, we’ve heard this kind of thinking before. If some of these folks were around when Columbus set sail, they must have been founding members of the Flat Earth Society. … There always have been folks who are the naysayers and don't believe in the future, and don't believe in trying to do things differently. One of my predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone, ‘It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?’ That's why he's not on Mount Rushmore because he’s looking backwards. He’s not looking forwards. He’s explaining why we can't do something, instead of why we can do something.”According to Ari Hoogenboom, who wrote the definite biography, “Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior and President,” Hayes entertained Thomas A. Edison at the White House. Edison demonstrated the phonograph for the president. “He was hardly hostile to new inventions,” Hoogenboom said.
— President Obama, remarks on energy, Largo, Maryland, March 15, 2012
Hayes, in fact, was such a technology buff that he installed the first telephone in the White House. A list of telephone subscribers published in the article “The Telephone Comes to Washington,” by Richard T. Loomis, shows that the White House was given the number “1.”
The White House phone initially was connected to the Treasury Department. Hoogenboom, in his book, writes that Hayes’s wife Lucy requested that a quartet sing on October 26, 1877, to inaugurate the service, but the concert abruptly ended because the powerful bass voice of one singer smashed “to atoms” the “sounding board of the telephone.” More at the link
