He was like a kid with a new toy. As President Trump began flying the new Air Force One, he raved about the luxury plane donated by Qatar. “Truly magnificent,” he said. “Truly spectacular,” he added. “There’s just nothing like it,” he emphasized.

And in a sense he was right. The new plane with its gold fixtures and reclining massage chairs was unlike the old one that presidents have traveled in for generations: It is believed to lack the same defensive countermeasures that the old model had to keep the flying commander in chief safe, as The New York Times has reported.

The furor over the new plane and its security drawbacks serves as a reminder of the evolution in presidential travel and efforts to keep the country’s leaders safe when they leave the fortresslike confines of the White House.

The modern president rides in an armored limousine nicknamed “the Beast” that in theory could survive explosions, and flies in specially designed Marine helicopters designed to defend against attacks from the ground.

But nothing has projected the political majesty that Air Force One has over the years. With its blue-and-white design and the words “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” emblazoned on the side, the plane has become a grand symbol of American power, recognized around the world. It’s even the star of its own action-adventure movie named after it.

When they have left office, presidents as disparate as George W. Bush and Barack Obama have lamented that one of the things they miss most about their time in power was the plane. (“Never lost my baggage,” Mr. Bush noted. No T.S.A. lines and “taking your shoes off and all that,” Mr. Obama pointed out.)

But none fixated on the aircraft as much as Mr. Trump. In his first term, he was so intent on replacing it with a new, splashier plane that he had a model of what it would look like in the Oval Office, then took the model with him when he left and displayed it in the lobby at Mar-a-Lago. Now in his second term, he finally has the real thing, which he had painted red, white and blue.

What would George Washington have thought? The first president, after all, had only a horse at his disposal. Here is a short history of presidential travel.

Washington enjoyed a little pomp at his first inauguration, arriving for the ceremony in a horse-drawn carriage. But by the end of the day, when he was trying to return to the presidential mansion to rest, the streets were so crowded that he had to abandon the carriage and walk the rest of the way.

When Mr. Trump arrived at the White House on the first day of his first term, by contrast, he was carried in a hermetically-sealed, bulletproof limousine. Officially code-named Stagecoach by the Secret Service, the car is more commonly called the Beast, the nickname bestowed by the news media when the first version of it was introduced in 2001 for Mr. Bush’s first inauguration.

The latest version came into service in 2018 during Mr. Trump’s first term. And in situations where the terrain is more rugged, the president rides in an S.U.V. version of the Beast, called the “Camp Package” after Camp David. A new version was introduced this year.

The history of presidential travel has a long arc bent toward isolation and heightened security measures. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln often commuted alone by horse from the Soldiers’ Home retreat to the White House; at some point Mary Todd Lincoln grew concerned and insisted that soldiers ride along with him.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt loved to drive himself in a car using special hand controls because of his polio. Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, open presidential motorcades were a thing of the past, and with few exceptions, modern presidents never drive themselves.

A turning point in presidential security was the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley, who was gunned down at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. After that, the Secret Service, which had only protected the president part-time, took on the duty of guarding him full-time.

But this was also a time of immense change on the presidential travel front. Mr. McKinley was the first president to ride in a motor vehicle and President Theodore Roosevelt the first to ride in an automobile owned by the government. His successor, President William Howard Taft, bought a few cars for the White House and converted the stables into a garage.

Woodrow Wilson was the first president to visit Europe while in office, crossing the Atlantic on the S.S. George Washington twice to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended World War I.

Many Americans might be surprised that presidents had their own yacht for about a century. From 1880 to 1977, a succession of different ships acted as the “Floating White House.” The 273-foot-long U.S.S. Mayflower was the first luxury version, and Theodore Roosevelt used it during his efforts to broker an end to the Russo-Japanese War.

His distant cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt discussed D-Day plans with Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower aboard the U.S.S. Sequoia. But President Jimmy Carter sold the Sequoia shortly after taking office as a gesture to presidential modesty following Watergate.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first sitting president to travel by plane, a Douglas VC-54C Skymaster nicknamed “the Sacred Cow.” He flew to overseas summit meetings with Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Britain and, eventually, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, including in Casablanca, Tehran and Yalta.

But it was Mr. Kennedy who made the president’s plane an international icon. It was he who directed that a Boeing 707 reserved for presidential use be painted blue and white. He also wanted the lettering of “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” to mirror the look of the words on the Declaration of Independence.

Every president since then flew in planes with the same design, but Mr. Trump did not like it and insisted on the red, white and blue paint job.

Air Force One is actually the official code name for any plane in which the president flies, but for decades there have been two primary planes, specially equipped Boeing 747-200Bs that presidents flew, until Mr. Trump’s donated Qatari luxury jet. They were delivered in 1990 during President George H.W. Bush’s administration.

Mr. Trump complains that the current planes are old and not as impressive as the luxury jets flown by Arab royals. “It’s like from a different planet,” he said.

White House officials have tried for years to replace them with newly converted modern aircraft, but the $3.9 billion project has been repeatedly delayed. The first of the new pair of Boeing 747-8’s is scheduled to be delivered in mid-2028. Rather than wait, Mr. Trump accepted the Qatari jet as a bridge until they are finally ready.

Many critics, including Republicans, have found it unseemly or even corrupt for an American president to accept a plane as a gift from a foreign country, deeming it to be an obvious payoff to curry favor and an embarrassment that the United States not provide its own aircraft.

But Mr. Trump cares little about such complaints. He wants a plane that he can show off and that he considers befitting of the most powerful person in the world.