The Federal Bureau of Investigation was originally simply called the Bureau of Investigation when it was founded on July 26, 1908. To most people, however, the FBI is more closely associated with its most famous director, J. Edgar Hoover, whom many believe created the agency and served as its first director. By the time Hoover assumed the directorship, however, the Bureau had already existed under four previous presidential administrations with four directors and one interim director. This early history of the FBI is often forgotten, largely because Hoover’s tenure, which itself ran through eight presidential administrations in a span of forty-eight years, overshadowed everything about that agency.