Most of you who saw PM Modi speaking in the US Congress on Wednesday, must have been impressed with his oratory skills. After all, standing in front of such a huge, impressive crowd and pelting out a flawless speech, is no small feat.

Most of you who saw PM Modi speaking in the US Congress on Wednesday, must have been impressed with his oratory skills. After all, standing in front of such a huge, impressive crowd and pelting out a flawless speech, is no small feat.

But our prime minister had some help in the matter. He went the 'Obama way' and decided to employ the use of two teleprompters which guided him through his eloquent speech.

So what if he has always 'winged it' in most of his rallies, or used notes in other foreign trips. This time around he couldn't afford to forget his speech midway or lose eye contact with his audience. Hence the teleprompter, which ensures his smooth sailing.

Some politicians (read Obama) have been chided for employing the use of a teleprompter because it makes their speeches sound mechanical. According to a report, Joe Biden once famously said, "You can’t tell Barack that the teleprompter’s down. The standing joke in the office is Barack’s learning to speak without a teleprompter, I’m learning to speak with one. I apologize for the teleprompter."

Now you might think that speaking from a teleprompter is fairly easy. But, while it gives one the reassurance of a written script, there are many 'technological' errors that can take place. Modi himself has had a steep learning curve, because only last year in February, he was a butt of a lot of jokes for taking the teleprompter too literally.

While welcoming the visiting Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and his wife, he greeted the first lady as M R S Sirisena, and that invited a host of nasty comments. Some claimed his Gujarati roots were to blame for the gaffe.

But judging by his new avatar, we think the prime minister has learnt his lesson since then.

But here are a few others who have been publicly embarrassed, thanks to a teleprompter.

In 1993, when Bill Clinton was addressing US Congress to promote his health-care plan, the teleprompter was fed the wrong speech. The problem took seven minutes to resolve during which time a resourceful Clinton winged it and spoke successfully. Some even thought he did better than the prompted speech.

In 2002 George Bush was due to speak in the United Nations about the looming confrontation with Iraq. Bush had agreed to seek a new Security Council resolution after much deliberation, but when the speech was fed into the teleprompter, the key line went missing. Many panicked when they saw that the line was missing. When Bush noticed it, he ad-libbed it, but with a plural connotation. He said he would seek "the necessary resolutions" and the Europeans kept hounding him to seek a second resolution before going to war.

Trump was famously chided for mis-pronouncing the country Tanzania, and many blame the teleprompter for not feeding him the phonetic description of the word. He was mocked by a spokesman of Obama administration who during a meeting with the reporters said, "Apparently the phonetics aren’t included on the teleprompter," and hence his mis-pronunciation?

And here is a small treat. See what happens when Obama has to go without a teleprompter for a few seconds: