JANUARY 18, 10:27 EST

WASHINGTON (AP) - Setting precedents with every move onto untrodden ground, George Washington took the first oath of office outdoors, hurriedly sent out for a Bible and added the words ``So Help me God'' at the end of the oath prescribed by the Constitution.

Washington's second inaugural address four years later has stood the test as time as the shortest - 135 words.

A quick look at the traditions and customs of inaugural history, an unbroken record of the peaceful transfer of governmental power over more than two centuries:

-April 30, 1789: George Washington delivers first inaugural address at Federal Hall in New York City.

-March 4, 1797: John Adams becomes the first president to take the oath of office from the chief justice of the United States.

-1801: Thomas Jefferson, the first president to be inaugurated in Washington, delivers an inaugural address appealing for national unity after a nasty and divisive election. ``We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists,'' he says. John Adams does not attend.

-1809: James Madison holds the first inaugural ball to be held on Inauguration Day itself. The Marine Band plays, setting an enduring precedent.

-1817: James Monroe becomes the first president to take the oath of office outdoors in Washington, setting a precedent most other presidents have tried to follow.

-1829: Like his father, John Quincy Adams opts not to attend his successor's inaugural. But the Westerners who support Andrew Jackson overwhelm the White House, causing the elderly chief executive to escape through a window.

-1837: Jackson and President-elect Martin van Buren ride together to the Capitol in a carriage. In another first, Van Buren's inaugural parade features elaborate floats.

-1841: William Henry Harrison, the first president to arrive in Washington by railroad, delivers a 10,000-word inaugural address, to date, the longest.

-April 6, 1841: After Harrison's sudden death, John Tyler becomes the first vice president to succeed to the nation's highest office.

-1853: Franklin Pierce becomes first president to affirm rather than swear when taking the oath to uohold the Constitution.

-1857: James Buchanan's inaugural is the first known to have been photographed.

-1861: Cavalry, snipers and artillery batteries shield Abraham Lincoln from assassination as he appeals to Southern states not to secede from the Union.

-1865: Lincoln urges that the Civil War be concluded ``with malice toward none; with charity for all.''

-1877: Rutherford B. Hayes, the loser of the popular vote, is made president by a one-vote margin in the Electoral College. He becomes the first president to be sworn in at the White House, in this case because March 4 fell on a Sunday.

-1897: William McKinley's inaugural is the first ever recorded by a movie camera.

-Sept. 4, 1901: Theodore Roosevelt takes the oath of office in Buffalo, N.Y., after McKinley dies of an assassin's bullet.

-1917: Woodrow Wilson breaks precedent by taking the oath privately on a Sunday; repeats it in public ceremony on Monday.

-1921: Warren G. Harding becomes first president to ride to the inaugural ceremony in an automobile. His speech was the first to be heard by the crowd outside the capitol through loudspeakers.

-1925: Calvin Coolidge is sworn in by Chief Justice William Howard Taft, the first time a former president gives the oath to a successor.

-1929: Herbert Hoover's inaugural is the first to be recorded by a sound newsreel.

-Jan. 20, 1937: Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes first president inaugurated on the new date set by the 20th Amendment to the Constitution. The ceremony also marks the first time the vice president is inaugurated outdoors on the same platform with the president-elect.

-1941: Roosevelt becomes the first president to take the oath of office for a third time, a record extended when Roosevelt is inaugurated for a fourth time in 1945.

-1949: Harry S. Truman's inauguration is the first to be televised.

-1953: Dwight D. Eisenhower wears a common hat - a homburg - instead of the customary top hat; breaks with custom by reciting a prayer instead of kissing the Bible.

-1961: The first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy's inaugural is attended by both his parents, a first. Robert Frost reads a poem - another first - in a ceremony televised for the first time in color. Kennedy, the last president to wear a top hat to his inaugural, sparks popular enthusiasm through his inaugural rhetoric: ``And so my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.''

-Nov. 22, 1963: Lyndon B. Johnson becomes president after Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, the first president to be inaugurated on an airplane and the first to be sworn in by a woman, a federal judge.

-Aug. 4, 1974: Gerald R. Ford becomes the first unelected president to become president after the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon.

-1977: Jimmy Carter and his family walked down Pennsylvania to the reviewing stand in front of the White House.

-1981: Ronald Reagan: The site of the inauguration is changed from the traditional East Front of the Capitol where 35 presidents had taken the oath of office to the West Terrace, opening up a view down the National Mall past the Washington Monument.

-1997: Bill Clinton: For the first time the inaugural ceremony is carried live on the Internet.

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Based on data prepared by the Library of Congress.