While you’re enjoying the annual Presidents’ Day traditions—which, if you’re not a federal employee, likely include “going to work” and maybe “getting a great deal on financing for a new 2008 Toyota”—be sure to take some time to reflect on the contributions of our nation’s geekiest commanders-in-chief.

Take John Quincy Adams. We like to think that automated phone jamming and push polling are tactics connived in the modern era, but the history of the auto-dialer traces all the way back to John Q. Adams’ 1828 reelection campaign against Andrew Jackson. The telephone didn’t exist yet, but amateur inventor Adams nonetheless designed a prototype auto-dialer. His device was comprised of a guy on a horse riding from house to house, screaming, “WOULD YOU BE MORE OR LESS LIKELY TO VOTE FOR ANDREW JACKSON IF YOU LEARNED THAT HIS WIFE WAS A BIGAMIST WHORE?” The rudimentary push poll did not convert to electoral success, but Jackson’s wife died shortly after the election, a moral victory for Adams.

Death played a more meaningful role in the political career of Millard Fillmore, who took over the Oval Office when Zachary Taylor died from gastroenteritis caused by bad salsa. Fillmore seized the opportunity by opening relations with isolationist Japan, writing to Congress that “the general prosperity of our States on the Pacific requires that an attempt should be made to open the opposite regions of Asia to a mutually beneficial exchange of wacky snacks and pop-culture items.”

Commodore Matthew Perry returned from his triumphant voyage to the Orient with a crate of import games for the president. Fillmore played them for a few days and then stuck them in a corner because, according to his correspondence, he “did not understand what was transpiring, owing to difficulties of translation” and was “perplexed by the apparent Japanese obsession with nosebleeds.”

Finally, a fun fact. We all know that AOL’s famous “You’ve Got Mail!” greeting is a recording of William Howard Taft, but he’s not the only president whose vocal talents delighted dial-up users in the 1990s. The familiar screeches, whistles, and metallic tones of modem negotiation originally emitted from the mouth of one Calvin Coolidge. The president known as “Silent Cal” was actually an avid practitioner of mouth noises in his private time, and he transcribed his bizarre warblings to wax cylinder in the hope that they would someday benefit the nation. So the next time you phone in to your favorite BBS, think of Cal!