Time, gentlemen, please

[pne]

AT&T will stop providing a "time" service (aka "speaking clock") through a telephone number -- the end of an era.

Cute little story, including the names of a few people who were the "voices" of the Speaking Clock at various times.

ETA: I just saw this comment on the article on Slashdot about this :

My seven-year-old daughter had never heard it. I read the LA Times article this morning, dialed the number nostalgically for myself, and then went and explained it to my daughter. She had all these questions, like "By the time they say what time it is, isn't it already over?" and "Do they do it every second?" I had imagined that it was just part of our universally shared culture, but it was obviously a completely foreign concept to her. I dialed it for her and had her listen. She listened and smiled at me indulgently.

And that made me think. I've imagined it was "part of our universally shared culture", too, but with people such as a guy I knew who didn't even wear a wrist watch (he'd check the display of his mobile phone if he wanted to know the time), I'm probably wrong.

*sigh* I feel old.

Comments

[lnbw.livejournal.com]

How sad! I used to call that number whenever we had a black-out. (Although the article is talking about a specific area, I assume it's country-wide.)

[pne.livejournal.com]

Well, the article said that 48 states had already got rid of it, and California was in the process of doing so, leaving only Nevada -- until their machines run down, too.

[node-ue.livejournal.com]

I'm 18, and I knew about it. When I was little, my mom used to call it to reset clocks. I didn't know we didn't have it here anymore.

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

You mean something like that exists or used to exist in Germany, too? Anyway, I'd never heard of it either. I can hardly imagine why anyone would dial it.
Oh, and I also know people who don't wear a watch anymore but just look at their mobile phone.

[pne.livejournal.com]

You mean something like that exists or used to exist in Germany, too?

Yes, and it used to have a special short number (five digits, starting with 11, I believe).

When I was a child, there was a whole list of such special numbers for automatic information: weather, recipes, cinema programmes, and similar things.

They switched over at least some of them to 0900 numbers. Time used to run on the 0900 number and the old one in parallel, but I think they finally switched off the old number some time ago -- the 0900 should still work, though.

I can hardly imagine why anyone would dial it.

For example, after the electricity in your house failed and you want to reset the wall clocks or the VCR.

More important in the days before accurate wristwatches, I'll grant.

The announcement I remember went something like this: "Beim nächsten Ton ist es [pause] neun Uhr [pause] sechsunddreißig Minuten [pause] und vierzig Sekunden [pause] [beep]" with short pauses in between the various phrases -- I presume they pieced together short "Sprachkonserven" for it. There'd be a new announcement every ten seconds.

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

In the past we used the "Videotext" on TV to check the time after a blackout. Nowadays, we look at the phone in the kitchen with a clock on the display, which I think is readjusted every time one makes a phone call, so the clock is always pretty accurate.