When Harry S. Truman became president on April 12, 1945, he inherited the RCA Continuous-film Recording machine that Roosevelt used during the 1940 Presidential election campaign. There are approximately ten hours of recordings from the Truman administration that were recorded between 1945 and 1947, with the bulk of the recordings dating from 1945. Very few concrete facts are known about these recordings and of the ten hours of recordings, only a few hours consist of intelligible conversation.

Browsing or searching the Truman tapes

• All available recordings for all six presidents who secretly recorded conversations are available on the Research the Tapes landing page. The collection of recordings across all six presidents includes more than 30,000 unique recordings. 
• Using the "Filter" tool, you can limit your search or browsing to one or more presidents. 
• If you filter on the Truman tapes, they will display in chronological order. 
• Each recording has two parts.  There are 10 recordings (and 20 individual parts or audio files available). The recordings are listed simply as Recording 1, Part 1; Recording 1, Part 2 etc….
• The Truman tapes are impossible to search.  No metadata exists for the recordings, and the quality of the recordings make the audio largely unintelligible.