There are multitaskers, and then there’s Lyndon B. Johnson. The famously loquacious commander in chief was known for making as many as 40 phone calls a day, including three at a time when the occasion called for it. In fact, one of his first acts upon taking office was overhauling the White House’s phone system; historian William Doyle reported that LBJ had them installed “under dinner tables, coffee tables, end tables, in bathrooms, and on windowsills.” According to Doyle, the 36th president “used the telephone like an assault weapon. He didn’t just pick up the telephone, he grabbed the telephone.”

LBJ also had phones placed in cars and boats at his Texas ranch, with columnist Joseph Kraft noting that Johnson “must be the only man in the world who has had a phone installed beside a hammock.” 

The obsession did serve a purpose, though. LBJ was (in)famous for bending individual members of Congress to his will in order to pass such sweeping legislation as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and much of this politicking was done over the phone. He was also known for recording his conversations and reading the transcripts at night; many of those tapes are now part of his presidential library in Austin, Texas.