The Secret Service installed and maintained the taping system, numbered the tapes 1 through 950, and filed them according to their taping location.

• The Nixon Staff identified and assigned a unique conversation number to the recordings on each original tape.
  
  
• The conversation is the lowest description level used for the tapes.

Conversation Numbers  [See Also:  How the Tapes are Organized]

The conversation number consists of two elements:

1. The first element identifies the reel of original White House tape (1 though 950).
   
   
2. The second element identifies the specific conversation on each reel of tape, beginning with "1" for the first conversation on the tape, "2" for the second conversation, "3" for the third conversation, etc.

Numbers are assigned sequentially until the tape goes blank. For example, the first conversation on White House telephone tape 45 is identified as WHT 45-1, the second conversation is identified as WHT 45-2, and so on.