Before Hoover became president, he starred in the first television broadcast in American history

Hoover was shown live in the first American television demonstration on April 7, 1927, while serving as secretary of commerce under President Calvin Coolidge. Hoover became the first person to appear on a long-distance TV broadcast when this moving picture was transmitted more than 200 miles away to Whippany, New Jersey, and then on to the AT&T offices in Manhattan. Hoover started to a group of journalists and dignitaries in New York City through a connection that stretched from Washington, D.C. that "now we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight for the first time in the history of the globe."

It was as if an image had come to life and started to talk, grin, nod its head, and glance in this direction and that, according to a New York Times report. In retrospect, the entrance of vaudeville comic A. Dolan, who first performed in blackface after changing quickly from his Irish-American stereotype costume, tainted the show. Hoover, on the other hand, made a statement on the event's significance for science, telling reporters that "human brilliance has now abolished the hindrance of distance."