The LBJ Ranch had only a single telephone line when Lyndon Johnson bought the property in 1951, but by the time he became vice president in 1960 it had expanded to 15 local and long-distance phone lines and a fifty-foot-tall antenna supplying reception for three televisions, one for each network. After Johnson became president in November 1963, the ranch required a modern secure communications system reaching across the United States and the world, and within four weeks it held enough equipment for a small city, including microwave towers providing 120 channels to Austin, underground phone cables, 72 telephones, two-way radios, teleprinters, and cryptographic machines. Green buildings at the site housed a fifty-thousand-kilowatt emergency generator and switchboard, and Johnson could spend 18 hours a day on the phone.