Committee of the Whole. Senate rules permitted record votes on every issue.

But the House took most of its votes

while sitting as a Committee of the Whole House (all Members of the House sat as a committee rather than as the
House of Representatives), where record votes were prohibited to speed action by the large body.
The House's nonrecord vote practice was patterned after a centuries-old English system whereby members of
Parliament could hide their individual votes from the king. In 1832, the English system was reformed to provide for a
public record of votes. The House reform came 138 years later.
The Continental Congress frequently used the Committee of the Whole and in 1789 the first Congress adopted a system
of rules for the House which provided for a Committee of the Whole. In 1840, a Speaker ruled that record votes could not
be taken in the Committee of the Whole and the ruling has been reaffirmed since. The rules provided that only
amendments approved in the Committee of the Whole could be voted on by the full House. Amendments rejected in the
Committee of the Whole and not reported to the House by the Committee were not considered by the full body and thus
no roll-call vote could be taken.
The Committee of the Whole procedure had the advantage of allowing the House to conduct its business with fewer
Members present and more quickly since time-consuming roll calls were prohibited. A quorum was made in the
Committee of the Whole with only 100 Members present as opposed to a majority of the membership required to
transact business for the House (218 Members when there were no vacancies).
Technically, the Committee of the Whole considered only bills directly or indirectly appropriating money, authorizing
appropriations or involving taxes or charges on the public, but actually it frequently had considered other types of
legislation, often in form of amendments. When the full House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole, it
supplanted the Speaker with a chairman. Measures were debated or amended, with non-record votes as needed. The
votes could be voice (ayes and nays aloud), division (Members stood and were counted), or teller (Members filed past
the tellers who counted those favoring and opposing a question but did not record names. It was almost impossible for
observers to get an accurate list of Members voting- and how they voted-on teller votes because the Members passed
by the tellers facing away from the press gallery and toward the public gallery where note-taking was forbidden.).
Committee of the Whole action was tentative. Official and final approval of amendments and actual passage of bills
occurred when the Committee completed its work and resolved itself into the House of Representatives. For final House
action on a bill, record votes could be requested by one-fifth of the Members present on amendments that were adopted
in the Committee of the Whole. Teller votes in the full House required a demand by one-fifth of the House quorum of 218
Members (44 Members). Division votes were ordered on the demand of any Member.