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.

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.

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.

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. :)