The keel of battleship number 39 was laid on the morning of 16 March 1914 with Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt in attendance. The builders intended to set a world-record ten months between the ship's keel-laying and launch, for what the "New York Times" declared would be "the world's biggest and most powerful, both offensively and defensively, superdreadnought ever constructed," but the ship was only a little over half complete a year later. She was launched on 19 June 1915, making it about fifteen months from keel-laying to launch. In the meantime, the ship was named after the newest state in the union by Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels.