Speaker of the United States House of Representatives by the President "pro tempore" of the Senate and by the heads of federal executive departments. To date, the implementation of the Presidential Succession Act has never been necessary and no Speaker has ever acted as President. Implementation of the law almost became necessary in 1973 after the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew. At the time, many believed that President Richard Nixon would resign because of the Watergate scandal, allowing Speaker Carl Albert to succeed to the Presidency. However, before he resigned, Nixon appointed Gerald Ford as Vice President in accordance with the Twenty-fifth Amendment. Nevertheless, the United States
Seal of the Vice President of the United States the vice president's seal remains obscure, as seal historians have largely ignored it, and there is virtually no information on early usage. Similar to the presidential seal, the primary usage appears to have been to seal the envelopes for correspondence from the Vice President, and the envelopes were presumably discarded even if the correspondence was kept, so there is little record remaining. The earliest known reference to a vice presidential seal was in a November 6, 1846 letter from the Chief Clerk of the United States Senate, William Hickey, to a Maryland seal engraver named Edward Stabler (who had made