Bill Clinton: I Sent Two Emails As President

During a speech at the Wired for Change conference in New York, former President Bill Clinton joked about his credentials as a techie and admitted he sent only two emails while in office.

"I sent a grand total of two emails as president," he said, according to Fast Company.

What were those two missives?

"One to our troops in the Adriatic, and one to John Glenn when he was 77 years old in outer space. I figured it was OK if Congress subpoenaed those," Clinton said.

Clinton also reminisced about the state of technology during his tenure as president.

"When he took office in '93, he added, there were about 50 sites on the Internet, and cell phones were so heavy that they were best used for bicep curls," Fast Company writes.

Read more about Clinton's remarks here.

Comments

[Old Army Grunt]

07:30 PM on 02/23/2011

Back in 1966 when I started in the computer industry, we still had two operational systems that used vacuum tubes as memory. One byte was roughly the size of my iPad but an inch thick. The tape drives used three inch tape and were the size of a car wheel. The drives were water cooled. Given my starting point, nothing has really surprised me much. I even remember being on the fore runner of the Internet and thinking "I wonder if this could have a commercial use".

[TicTucTo]

07:53 PM on 02/20/2011

It's an article like this that makes you stop and think how far technology has come in such a short amount of time. Oh, Bill...

[DTSLW]

11:45 PM on 02/19/2011

what in gods name is that strange device he's typing on.

[Lahonda]

11:30 PM on 02/19/2011

That was way back when there were three IT running out there to wipe your headers.

Man! Those were the days!

[Lahonda]

11:15 PM on 02/19/2011

He ordered Cubans.

[LMPE]

12:55 AM on 02/19/2011

The first millennial prez will probably spend half the time texting.

[xstevejx]

08:10 PM on 02/18/2011

Just like with any job, you certainly don't want to be using work Email for PERSONAL stuff.

[tooncesrocks]

12:07 PM on 02/18/2011

Presidents have a staff for that purpose...

they shouldn't be spending time watching for the "you've got mail" icon

[opposingviewsareopposed]

05:40 AM on 02/18/2011

How many cigar text messages did he send to Monica?

[FantasticFourFan]

09:09 PM on 02/18/2011

Same amount Newt sent to his mistress around the same time.

[Ramkshrestha]

05:14 AM on 02/18/2011

Then his secretary must be busy to send mails on behalf oh him.

[Lisa Spurgeon Bullock]

04:06 AM on 02/18/2011

Still more than McCain has sent even to this day!

I got my first home computer in 1995. I had AOL and chat rooms were all the rage. I remember using ICQ a lot back then too. And he was President until 2001, email was more than common then. I just can't believe he would have only sent 2 emails, especially since Gore was his VP.

[opposingviewsareopposed]

05:41 AM on 02/18/2011

LOL...Al only invented the internet, not email.

[FantasticFourFan]

09:10 PM on 02/18/2011

We still wouldn't have it without him.

[Mr Crabs]

03:47 AM on 02/18/2011

And someone got fired because Katie Couric didn't know what the internet was.

[freedom4allau]

08:06 AM on 02/18/2011

I believe that incident occurred in the 80's, 1987 or so - - who else had heard of the internet then? Mr Clinton was in office commencing January 1993. A few years makes a huge difference in what is known and used in technology.

[Mr Crabs]

09:52 AM on 02/18/2011

That incident occurred in 1994. AOL was barely launched a year before for Windows 3.0 so unless Couric was a DOS running BBS user I wouldn't be surprised that she had no idea what the internet was.

[Eleanor Ruby Moon]

11:37 PM on 02/17/2011

Anyone here saying they didn't send many more emails than Clinton for the same period of time is showing his/her age. I was online voraciously since 1996 and must have sent 1000s of emails. Now they're out of fashion.

And while I'm here, Gov Chris Christie is a shockingly bad person and I wonder if Ann Coulter's mother had any children who lived.

[RTIII]

10:15 PM on 02/17/2011

Yeah, and I had one of those 50 sites on the internet!

Well, actually there were - and I'm ABSOLUTELY guessing here - maybe a couple of thousand, depending on how you counted universities and their pages.

[HamletsMill]

11:39 PM on 02/17/2011

Hey but Compuserve was good stuff in 1990!

[regulargal]

11:36 AM on 02/18/2011

I used Compuserve, as well as, AOL. Compuserve had smarter users. I also tried Prodigy which had avatar character chat rooms.