When President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, it will be the 100th in-person delivery by a president of the constitutionally-mandated update. The speech, and the attention surrounding it, have evolved quite a bit over time.

President George Washington delivered the first iteration of the State of the Union in January of 1790 to fulfill the requirements of Article II, Section 3 of the United States Constitution. The clause dictates that the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” The speech was then known as the Annual Message. Washington gave eight over the course of his two terms, and President Johen Adams continued the tradition. President Thomas Jefferson decided to switch to a written message, and that became the norm for more than a century.

The return to the in-person annual update came in 1913 under President Woodrow Wilson. A decade later, President Calvin Coolidge brought his message to an even wider audience with a live radio broadcast of his address. And then in 1947, President Harry Truman’s speech was the first to be televised. That’s also when “State of the Union” became the official term for the tradition.

The televised address now allows the president to speak directly to the American people about the successes of the term so far and the agenda for the year ahead. Tens of millions of people watch from home, including a record 62 million in 2003 as President George W. Bush addressed a nation on the brink of going to war with Iraq.