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The presidential election is one of the most important nights of the year for the United States. The same can be said for The New York Times.

The first presidential election covered in The Times was in 1852, a year after the newspaper was established. The news was shared in a column of the eight-page newspaper — then called the New-York Daily Times — the day after the election: Early results indicated that Franklin Pierce, a Democrat, would likely defeat Winfield Scott of the Whig Party.

In the decades that followed, The Times became faster at conveying results to readers. On Election Day in 1928, for example, The Times’s Motograph, known as the “zipper” — an electric banner that wrapped around The Times’s building in Manhattan — lit up for the first time, announcing Herbert Hoover’s victory.

In 1996, nytimes.com was rolled out. In the decades since, The Times has used its website (and later, its app) to deliver breaking election news to readers, with increasing speed — and more and more data — with every election.

Nowadays, tools like the Needle, graphics and interactive maps help keep the website as up-to-date as possible, all night (and morning) long. Data reporters pore over numbers coming out of each state and district; reporters in battleground states stay in close contact with The Times’s command center in Manhattan.

As states count their votes tonight, reporters and data analysts for The Times will put all the news and real-time updates into context on The Times’s home page; in the early hours of the morning, print newspapers will arrive at homes and corner stores around the world.