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."

Comments

Evil

[calvy]

This is by far the most evil thing AT&T has done. How can they take time away from us? Gasp

Re:Evil

[sqldr]

How can they take time away from us?

They usually do that by way of their automated call-queueing system.

I feel sorry...

[Treskin]

I feel really sorry for whoever gets assigned the POP-CORN phone number.

Sad

[davidc]

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.

Don't pick up that phone

[Applekid]

TFA:

One upside: AT&T says doing away with time would enable the creation of about 300,000 new phone numbers in California beginning with the 853 or 767 prefixes. Great, just what I need if I get one of those new numbers: questions about what time is it. Yes, my refridgerator is also running and there's no need to catch it, either.

Jacking Into The Matrix

[Marc_Hawke]

"anxiously awaiting the arrival of its cousin: The Pay-Phone."

That's gonna make escaping Agent Smith just THAT much harder.

Ehhh...

[LynnwoodRooster]

It was all relative, anyway...

Advanced Technology

[nairnr]

Whoa, we must have been ahead of the curve. We used to get Time AND Temperature!!!

No disrespect to the dead meant...

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

But we used to call her the "Bell Bitch"

Re:It's more than sad. Help! Anyone got alternativ

[MyLongNickName]

202 456 1414

No productive work goes on there, so you won't be interrupting anyone.

The payphone? NEVER!

[MadFarmAnimalz]

The payphone will never be obsolete so long as we have Superman.

Ah, memories...

[Reality Master 101]

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!")

Re:Why it existed

[InterruptDescriptorT]

I found this out years ago when my GF was getting really persistent obscene phone calls.
Sorry about that. I've moved on and starting harassing someone else's GF. No hard feelings, I hope. :)