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AT&T Stops 'Time', Ends An Era
theoeag writes "Starting in September, you will no longer be able to pick up a landline, payphone, etc and find out what time it is at the beep. AT&T, which has had the service since the 20s, cited a lack of demand in the digital age as the reason for "time"'s extinction. Actually, the service had already stopped in most states, but Nevada and California — with their large rural and unmapped areas — were still holding out, should the lost motorist or weary hiker need to know the time of day. But no more! The "Time Machine", which consisted of two large drum-like devices that contained several audio-tracks and a quite advanced system for syncing up with the caller, will probably end up in a museum, anxiously awaiting the arrival of its cousin: The Pay-Phone."
This is by far the most evil thing AT&T has done. How can they take time away from us? Gasp
I remember listening to this in the early 60's. I thought that it was pretty. Obviously, the current tech surpases that. In fact, You will shortly be able to obtain an atomic clock chip at a "reasonable" price. But the idea of just picking up the phone and getting the tick off was reassuring, esp when we had lost electricity for up to 2 weeks at a time.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You have NNTP, the broadcast atomic clock information, and the cell-phone network, all of which provide exquisitly accurate time to everyone.
Test your net with Netalyzr
The Romanian equivalent - 958 (058 before the renumbering) - is still going strong - all-trough in form of a 2 node cluster - but with the original voice - digitized.
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
I feel really sorry for whoever gets assigned the POP-CORN phone number.
I'm sad to see this go. I didn't use it very much but it was kind of reassuring that it was there. Okay, I'm crazy!
I once answered the phone at work, and found that the call was the speaking clock. Weird... folks told me it was probably returning all the past calls I'd placed to it.
yes it is! Oh, wait...
My humor is probably your flamebait
More Twoson than Cupertino
How does everyone set their clocks without calling time? Lacking pulling out the shortwave radio and tuning to WWV, wasn't this the only low latency high accuracy clock easily accessible from home? (Key words low latency)
NOO! Not the 617-522-1171! It also gives me my current temperature outside.
Priceless for a basement-dwelling geek like me who has to check the weather outside to know if it's snowing or burning.
"Flag on the moon. How did it get there?"
"anxiously awaiting the arrival of its cousin: The Pay-Phone."
That's gonna make escaping Agent Smith just THAT much harder.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
It was all relative, anyway...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Why does the article repeatedly refer to a Speaking Clock as "Time"?
* Envisages Neo walking up to the 'Time Machine', holding up his open hand and quietly whispering, "No." *
We still have the speaking clock in the UK, and have for as long as I can remember.
"Oh boy"
Whoa, we must have been ahead of the curve. We used to get Time AND Temperature!!!
Cable TV? cell phone? internet?
Your wristwatch?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The thing that finally made the AT&T time service over telephone lines obselete was the dramatic reduction in the cost of small clocks that allow you to pick up the 60 kHz WWVB time signal. In fact, you can get wristwatches around US$40 that can do that now (I have a Casio wrist watch that does this).
I remember POP-CORN quite fondly. It was the only way to reset your clocks after a power outage if you didn't have a wind-up or battery powered watch/clock you trusted. My friends and I used to play the lamest game when we were in elementary school. We would dial POP-CORN and try to time it so the voice would say "exactly". It was a timing thing. Instead of saying "three forty-two and twelve seconds", to hear it say "three forty-three exactly" was a real score! Ah, the early 80s.
In the UK, we got a new speaking clock earlier this year. It's been sponsored for more than twenty years too.
Not sure how this service works. Know when I was very little back in the 80's you could call a number (thought bank) and it would have an automated time/weather. Seems like every city in the area had their own version of that. Is this the same thing? Or is there a centralized number for everone in the US to use in each timezone?
Wow! You guys really had me going there for a moment. I mean, if AT&T really did stop time, what rules would apply? Timecop rules or Back to the Future rules?
The game.
At&t has been giving away time for years, what a loss leader..... after all time == money right?
My main time reference at home is a WWVB clock.
In the field I use GPS for accurate (atomic clock accurate, in fact) time. If I have a shortwave radio with me I use WWV. WWV's audio feed is on 303 499 7111, which can be useful. Sometimes, for the hell of it, I'll dial WWVH on 808 335 4363 instead. I have both as contacts in my cellphone. Sad or what?
Aloha!
...laura, with many temporal options
But we used to call her the "Bell Bitch"
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
It just moves to VoIP, like everybody else: FWD 612
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.
Find free books.
Call in the next 60 seconds and get the current downtown temperature at no extra charge!
This is more than sad. For me it's been indispensible.
You see, those numbers are absolutely wonderful to use for websites that require a phone number for registration. Sure, I could just make up a number. Or give one out of someone else. But I hate the idea of bugging some innocent person with this. Even people whom I don't like.
A case in point are the job boards. These days lots of job shops in India pick up on these numbers and pester people for their Resumes non-stop. I suspect it's to say that they looked for an American citizen so they can fill a position with an H1-B (given their attitude, I can't imagine that it's to help work with the person they are calling).
So I give them the number for time, knowing that it will cost them money to call it.
There must be an elegant alternative which is equally fruitful, but I am at a loss for ideas. Does anyone have any?
I was testing out my new land line yesterday and called Time. I can't believe they're getting rid of it, it even has its own exchange (at least in Maryland). (Area code)-844-[any number]. It's odd though, it never occurred to me that it was run by AT I always just assumed it was NIST.
Give them a number starting in 411, i.e. (area code)-411-whatever, such as (419)-411-4321
They won't know the difference, but the locale should transfer them to information.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
I'm 99% sure that there are many local/regional/national telcos left that still provider time and weather. I'm guessing that they mean California and Nevada are the only states left that have dedicated entire prefixes for time and weather. FYI, the article didn't mention it, but Northern Nevada (everything but Vegas) uses 775-844-xxxx, traditionally 775-844-1212. I'm not sure about Southern Nevada (area code 702).
So why is AT&T completely getting rid of time & weather in California? The article talks about "obsolete equipment", but you could replace that with a Pentium 120MHz running Asterisk. Oh wait, we're talking about a big telco here. That would cost at least $10m.
The UK needs to have a speaking clock. How else would Ford Prefect be able to crash evil corporations in space.
We are the Borg...
202 456 1414
No productive work goes on there, so you won't be interrupting anyone.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I mean.. ..
just look at your cell phone..
or your watch..
or look up at almost any wall..
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
I may have to use that as well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Growing up in Chicago, I had a cheap wristwatch and a cheaper guitar. Every few days I'd pick up the phone, tune my A string to the 440Hz component of the dial tone, then dial (really dial!) CAthedral 8-8000 and set my watch. This didn't improve my playing or my punctuality, but it did make me feel better.
I figured this would've been built into the switches since the '80s if not sooner.
This kind of equipment belongs in the era of cross-bar telephone switches.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
What number will chics who you ask for their number use as their "real" number? Thanks AT&T, maybe we will have a chance to get their real phone numbers now!
Actually, the US Naval Observatory, which maintains the official time for the US still has the voice announcer available over the phone. According to this page the numbers are
(202) 762-1401 and (202) 762-1069
for Washington DC and
(719) 567-6742
for the alternate master clock in Colorado Springs, CO.
The payphone will never be obsolete so long as we have Superman.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
What is with headlines these days?? Just in the past couple of days i've seen headlines with the word "terror" (in quotes) just because someone quoted in the story used the word terror, and now "AT&T Stops 'Time'"? I realize headlines must be attention grabbing but this is a little ridiculous.
(area code) 555-1212 — this connects you to information for any area code, AFAIK.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I thought it was the speaking clock somewhere in Australia that he patched them through to. IIRC the BBC TV version played a little snippet that went something like "At the third stroke it will be [whatever], just enough time to crack open another tinnie."
202-762-1401 & 202-762-1069 (Washington DC), 719-567-6742 (Colorado Springs CO); the audio track from WWV.
Before the watch-futures market collapses, remember that time won't actually end. We'll get half-way to the cut-off date in September, then half-way from there, and so on, and so on . . .
I was just thinking about this the other day for some reason!
One memory I have from youth is taking my oh-so-new-and-cool digital watch and carefully synchronizing it exactly to the beep when I called time. :)
Of course, later I synced my watch one day to the atomic clock, and then for some reason decided to check it against 853-1212. Imagine my geek outrage when freakin' Time was FORTY SECONDS OFF. I felt like an idiot for carefully syncing my watch all that time.
*sigh* another naive belief of youth falls. ("I mean, it's the phone company, of course they'd carefully ensure that 853-1212 has the exact time to the millisecond!")
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I hope pay phones don't go completely extinct. I would have been royally screwed a couple months ago without one - I managed to lock myself out of my house with no keys, cel phone, or cash. I did have my wallet, though, so I could go to a 7-11, buy a prepaid phone card, and call my husband from a pay phone. Otherwise I would have had to break a window to get inside. (Now I have spare keys hidden in the car - I'd actually gone to make them that day but got there a half hour after the hardware store closed.)
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
So how will blind people get the time now?
I doubt we'll ever see a complete removal of pay-per-use communications points, especially in captive audience type areas.
Ice Cream has no bones.
You can still get time and temperature (preceded by an advertisement for Captain D's) at:
901-526-5261
It's commonly known around Memphis, TN -- at least among those who know about it -- as "JAMJAM1".
The Freelance Wizard
303-499-7111 (or tune your shortwave receiver to any one of the internationally allocated standard carrier frequencies of 2.5, 5, 10, 15, or 20 megahertz).
I live in the US, so read the book. In the book he patches into the London speaking clock.
We are the Borg...
Actually, for legal reasons that wouldn't work. You see, they need to use the same time marking as the billing system.
I found this out years ago when my GF was getting really persistent obscene phone calls. We called the phone company to ask for their help. They said to write down the time and date of each call. They specifically said to call their number for the time. I asked why. They said that way they could be sure who made the call to within 10 seconds, otherwise an eventual prosecution of the caller was sure to fail because the defense could argue that the GF's clock was off by just a few minutes, and that would be room for reasonable doubt.
BTW, I presume that they have concluded that it is no longer neccesary because everyone's cell phone has relatively accurate time ( and the clocks that are set according to cell time ).
407.646.31xx
...
Formerly of Barnett Bank
This reminds me of those numbers you could call years ago (Winter Park Public Library, anyone?) and hear a tape recorder playing childrens' stories. Long gone.
There's always AT&T teleconference systems. They'll get a voice asking for a password they don't have before they get to anything important, and that's unlikely to go away any time soon. You can find a ton of them by searching for corporate announcement conference call info.
Well, what really happened is that Bill and Ted took the payphone away, AND the time, too!
Corporations keep stealing my childhood memories. Many a time I dialed popcorn to get the time.
Don't laugh. That was the number.
qz
If I have access to a phone to call the time, shouldn't I be able to call for help?
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
Atomic clock receivers aren't hard to construct. You can easily modify an old MW/LW radio. Wire the antenna and oscillator gangs of the tuning capacitor in parallel and the MW and LW coils of the ferrite rod in series. This should be enough to get you down to 60kHz, but if you need a few extra pF then two adjacent tracks on a piece of breadboard are as good as anything. Feed the output into a digital storage oscilloscope. Adjust the timebase so it takes a minute to cross the screen. Real geeks can decode it by eye :)
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Here in Connecticut anyway it's still on from the local telco.
And the fact that I remember the exchange mnemonic tells you roughly how old I must be.
It still sounds like the time lady, whom I last heard on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, but I believe she's passed on.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
...But thanks to their roll-over minutes you can keep using that time for up to a year.
NIST: 303 499 7111
Gives time in UTC, so you'll have to shift over for your time zone.
And (209) 239-8181, if you don't mind the spiel.
301-844-1212 is still the time number here. Before we went to 10-digit numbers everywhere, it was 844-****
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Despite TFA's claim that only California and Nevada still have this service, when I dial 410-844-1212, I still get "At the tone, the time will be....". So it persists in Maryland, at least for the time being.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Sad to see it go? I've never even heard of this until today. It sounds like something that's been obsolete for more than a decade, easily. I wonder how much they spent maintaining this service, and how much of my bill reflected that? They should have shut down this service and auctioned the equipment to the nostalgic years ago. People say government is inefficient, but I believe wastefulness is a characteristic of any giant hierarchal entity. This news certainly helps support that belief.
976-1616. (still 7-digit dialing over here)
How long is it going to be before someone writes a little script that chops off the first 15 or so characters from the output of "ntpdate" and formats it into something like: say "The current date is " MMM DD; say "The current time is " HH MM "and " SS "seconds" say "you dweeb".
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
the power goes out at my house a few times a year (because i feed off an antiquated pg&e substation which keeps catching on fire). after the power comes back on i call pop-corn from my kitchen speakerphone so that i can sync my microwave and oven clocks. i think before they shut this off, at&t should require pg&e to fix their damn substation! now what am i gonna do? my ntp server and computers are all up/down stairs. where do i get a microwave with wifi and an ntp client?
It's the far more sensible 123 over here in the UK and it's still going far as I know.
this was their only way to get a woman to give them the time of day.
Thank you, I'll be here all week!
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
... I wonder if they will continue to get any gov subsidies that were meant to pay for this service for all?
Not to worry. Apple has announced they are well into development of "iTime", which will utilize a much cooler, more advanced touch screen interface. No word yet on whether you'll be able to replace the battery yourself...
Except that's a toll call for most of us. Unless you have a cell phone plan with unlimited long distance. In which case you just have to look at your cell phone to get the exact time.
Come to think of it, cell phones are probably the main reason nobody calls POPCORN any more. I'd like to say "the Internet", but in fact few people have the time clients on their desktops properly configured.
The neat thing about some time service phone numbers was that you could get the local weather too.
Most folks don't realize that you can do this quite easily with your cellphone, and you don't even need an Internet connection to do it! Here's how:
1. Take your cellphone out, and hold it very steady.
2. Extend the antenna.
If the cellphone is wet, then it's raining out. If the antenna jiggles, it's windy.
HTH.
The WP article mentions that the FCC forcing manufacturers to include "closed captioning" (audio subtitle) technology made them unwilling to also include Teletext. However, that was in the early 1990s, by which time Teletext was 15 years old anyway, so this must have been merely the final straw and doesn't explain its initial failure there.
This surprises me because (a) It was very successful in Europe, particularly the UK and (b) it's not like it was replaced by a similar rival service. In fact, Teletext was able to support subtitles/captioning- this is how it was done in the UK, so unless the US C.C. service was much cheaper to implement at the time, they could have done it that way.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Or you could just tune your shortwave radio to 2.5, 5, or 10 MHz, and get the same thing.
You do have a shortwave radio don't you?
sig?
Make a call:
(213) 853-1212
That's the number. I'm too young to have ever had to do this, but it was pretty cool.
I really hope they archive these for history.
Ah, another piece of childhood nostalgia gone. Who will I call to test if my landline is working now?
I always remembered the SoCal number (853-1212) because it makes a 'T' (like Time) on the telephone keypad. And now my Grandmother has to stop reminding me that the number is "UL3-1212," as she is wont to do.
it was pop-corn
then in the 80's pop-corn cost $0.10
In the 90's $0.25
Today $3.95, guess its time to by a watch
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
::sheash:: With all the money AT&T makes you would think they could set up an answering machine with the time on it.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
This is relevant mostly for Atlanta readers here:
1. 770-455-7141 continues to provide time and is all I've used for 20 years. Of course you can call it from outside Atlanta too, and these days the long distance charge is negligible ...
2. Jane Barbe's son David Barbe was one of the guys in Mercyland (late 80's Atlanta punk band), then joined Bob Mould (of Husker Du) to form Sugar, and these days runs his own recording studio in Athens GA.
One simple rule for its versus it's
I'm waiting for the Unreasonable UbuntuDupe release.
I wonder if someone could develop a global system of flying objects that could somehow measure the contours of the earth.
Then, finally, we would be able to discover what actually lies in these vast 'unmapped' areas of 'nevada' and 'california'.
Imagine the possibilities.
From the article, it mentions that the 767 prefix is now available (used to be 767 followed by any four digits would give you the time so they wouldn't allow numbers starting with 767)
Hmmm, someone could get the telephone number POP-CORN (767-2676)... more interestingly, it can also be used to spell "POR" so someone could also get 1-909-PORNSTAR (Suggested ad tagline: "Dial 1-909-PORNSTAR and leave off the last R 'cause it's all XXX!")
As an expat living in the US I always call home to check the time anyway - the AT&T service never seems to have it right.
Squirrel!
I do, but the thread is about phone services. :p
And you forgot 15 and 20MHz.
...and now AT&T is taking that number away from me *sniff*
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
At least that what it was in Pacific Bell territory in So Cal when I was growing up. Seems to me General Telephone had a different number... can't remember what it was though...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
It seems that very few things that you think are true for all states actually are. However, I would have expected nothing (i.e., no response) before I would have expected it getting re-routed to local information. You mom doesn't happen to live in Colorado, does she? ;)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It might be neat to have a grand central account on one of those. The beta is great- a free number! Check out the poet line.
This will save them thousands of dollars. Not that they've got anything to be bitter about.
Or you could just use GPS time. You do have GPS don't you?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
867-5309
AT&T used to mean something besides money grubbing it seems.
...most WorldWing models seem to work everywhere except the U.S.).
Personally I use the local time voice service often, whenever my cellphone stops working. It is 117 on my NTT DoCoMo phone, just like 113 is for emergency repair, and 110 is for police.
Once the U.S. starts getting more advanced phone networks you will wish you had it, you'd be surprised how quickly your phone can get turned off for a lapsed $250 3G bill. And just last week at a big fireworks show all the phones stopped working (you could get through once in about 50 calls) due too not enough virtual circuits being available for the crowds. With time, you can tell if you are really on the network or if your phone is broken.
I wonder whose time these services use in the U.S. (I'll be buying the new 905i when it comes out in October/November since it will be their most advanved model that can be used in the U.S.
What happened?
Does 900-410-TIME (8463) no longer work? Last I checked, that was the pay-per-call service associated with the U. S. Naval Observatory.
I don't know when I learned about POPCORN, but I've used it for years. As a telco installer (Cisco phones), I use it regularly to busy out lines to test things like DSP resources, etc. are really available. I called the number a half dozen times tonight turning up another bank branch. It's nice to have a free number to call that won't ring busy nor bug someone.
You'd think they could just send POPCORN to a MoH source multicasting the same thing over and over. I understand the need to get the prefixes back, but you could still keep the POPCORN one and give the other numbers back.
At the bottom of the page:
"Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it." -- Alex Schure
Many moons ago, I was involved in a project that required very accurate time (1 microsecond or better). We purchased a GPS with a 1-pulse-per-second output for this. The problem I had was that whereas I had these wonderfully sharp accurate pulses on each second, I wasn't quite sure WHICH second they were referring to!
The GPS manual wasn't that great, but I implemented what I thought was the correct solution. I then checked it against NTP time and - bingo - agreement! I then checked it against the phone company's clock and - hmmm - I was one second fast. So I checked it against a radio time signal and, once again, agreement.
So I called the phone company. Unfortunately, the person who maintained the clock was out, so I had to talk to his secretary. She was astonished - "why do you care that the clock is one second out!?". So I explained to her that one second was a big deal when I was trying to be accurate to a millionth of a second. After much scratching of heads, she finally said to me "Oh! Do you want me to change the time?!". The astonishment was now mine.
As one of my colleagues said - "you should have said yes - I'm late with my project!".
On a side note - the radio time source I used was Radio Moscow (I was working in the west of Ireland at the time, and that was the strongest time signal I could receive with the radio set I had). I noticed that the time from Radio Moscow was 11 milliseconds "late". Of course the reason was because I was about 3,300km from Moscow - I had just inadvertently measured the speed of light!
...were you trying to allude to bill and ted's excellent adventure with those two museum pieces, or was that just delightful happenstance!?
Granted the name calling the other coward did was out of sorts; but why was that modded troll while the parent was (even if they thought they weren't) being rather rude and offensive to someone they new little to nothing about and was rated funny? Should both cases of rudeness, and insults been treated the same, or are just inappropriate comments about voice actors who are now in their seventies considered funny?
WeatherCron, one of the companies mentioned in the story, still operates a time/temp number from their flagship offices. They use a man's voice rather than the women's voices they used on the phone company recordings.
Anyway, the number is 770-455-7141 as it has been for decades.
Of course the NIST number mentioned by some people is another good option. We all have free long distance so that should not be an issue for anyone.
Personally I miss the OLD WWV voice, before they computerized it back in the late 80s. I forget his name. Don somebody? They used to say he was from Atlanta... and both of these big companies were from Atlanta. Makes me wonder how much of that work was going on here.
This is probably the result of an "upgrade" in order to improve efficiency. The old (###)555-1212 numbers now get rerouted to a central location. That central location looks at the area code of the person calling instead of the area code called. Progress! :(
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Time? No, it's POP-CORN!
Were that I say, pancakes?
I am in Europe and one of my landlines is ISDN, which features an automated stream from my provider displaying the current time and date on both of my two ISDN terminals's screen continuously. In addition, I also have access to a voice time service. I make good use of both services every day, primarily the stream service, as I have found it much better to use the ISDN terminals as clocks instead of having dedicated clocks and remembering to change the DST settings or synchronise the time. The ISDN time stream automatically synchronises whenever I make a call, so I don't have to worry about DST. The voice service has also been proved useful as well in various ocassions, especially when out of my home office, although my mobile phone has a similar GSM time stream. I certainly wouldn't like to see phone time services going away, as they are useful for making sure what the correct and official time is.