During the summer of 1940, Franklin Roosevelt had a recording machine installed under the Oval Office with the intent to record press conferences. The machine was often turned on before press conferences and would often continue recording after the press conferences concluded. Because of this, many of the recordings include office discussions immediately before or following the press conference. Also a small number of conversations that may or may not be independent recordings (i.e. not associated with a specific press conference) were recorded.

The complete collection of Roosevelt Presidential Recordings is available for download below. On the original audio files, conversations often spanned more than one file. We have spliced audio files together when reasonably certain that the two files originally represented a single conversation.

Browsing or searching the Roosevelt tapes