During the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union established a direct communications link to allow their leaders to contact one another in the event of a nuclear crisis or other emergency. This Washington-Moscow hotline has since featured in countless novels and films such as 1964’s “Dr. Strangelove,” but contrary to its depictions in pop culture, it never took the form of a red telephone. In fact, it never involved phone calls at all.
The Washington-Moscow hotline was first proposed in the 1950s, but the idea didn’t gain traction until 1962’s Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Americans and Soviets found that their diplomatic messages often took several hours to reach one another. Fearing that any further mishaps might trigger an accidental nuclear war, the two superpowers met in Geneva the following year and signed a “Memorandum of Understanding Regarding the Establishment of a Direct Communications Line.” On August 30, 1963, the new system went live. Rather than a telephone link, which presented the possibility of miscommunications, the hotline consisted of teletype machines that allowed the two countries to send written messages to one another via transatlantic cable. The Soviet system was located in the Kremlin, but the American version was always housed in the Pentagon, not the White House. Satellite links were later added to the hotline during the Nixon administration, and in 1986, it was upgraded to include high-speed fax capability. The most recent overhaul came in 2008, when the system switched to email.
The live-action Batman (1966) show had a hotline connecting Commissioner Gordon's office to Bruce Wayne's study (of course, Gordon didn't know where Batman's end of the line was located). The phone is also equipped with Diversionary Bat-phone Lines, which prevent tracing the calls back to Stately Wayne Manor.