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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."
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.
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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).
My weird experience with "time" was one time I called it, and could hear the muffled sounds of everyone else who called it (with the time lady playing in the foreground). So it became like a big chat room, where everyone was asking what other people's real numbers were so they could call them and chat with random people of the opposite sex.
Since this was approximately 1977 and there was no internet, well, it seemed pretty cool for the few days it lasted.
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.
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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 ).