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(Updated: October 8, 2016) In October 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis ended and the world was saved from falling into a nuclear war. In order to prevent this risk in the future, the United States and the Sovjet Union established a direct communication line between their two capitals in August 1963. This Washington-Moscow Hotline became one of the most famous top level communications systems in modern history. In popular culture, the Washington-Moscow Hotline is often called the Red Phone , and therefore many people think it's a telephone line, with a red phone set on the president's desk. However, this is false: the Hotline was never a phone line, but instead set up as a teletype connection, which in 1988 was replaced by facsimile units. Since 2008 the Hotline is a highly secure computer link over which messages are exchanged by e-mail . Contents - Origins - Installation - The Hotline terminals - 1963: Teletype equipment - 1978: Satellite link - 1988: Facsimile equipment -