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Remember When You Could Call the Time?
An article on The Atlantic this week takes a stroll down the memory lane. It talks about phone services that people could call for knowing the time. The service, according to the article, was quite popular in 1980s. But many of them don't exist now. For instance, Verizon discontinued the line -- as well as its telephone weather service -- in 2011. But what's fascinating is that some of these services still exist, and are getting more traction than many of us would've imagined. From the article:"We get 3 million calls per year!" said Demetrios Matsakis, the chief scientist for time services at the Naval Observatory. "And there's an interesting sociology to it. They don't call as much on the weekend, and the absolute minimum time they call is Christmas. On big holidays, people don't care about the time. But we get a big flood of calls when we switch to Daylight [saving] time and back." As it turns out, people have been telephoning the time for generations. In the beginning, a telephone-based time service must have seemed like a natural extension of telegraph-based timekeeping -- but it would have been radical in its own way, too, because it represented a key shift to an on-demand service. In the 19th century, big railroad companies had used the telegraph to transmit the time to major railway stations. By the early 20th century, people could simply pick up the telephone and ask a human operator for the time.
...it's run by the local bank. It gives a quick advertisement for the bank, then time and temperature. Many organizations in town use it as the "official" temperature in town - "sportsball practice is cancelled if the temp is below X degrees, call time and temp for the temperature". It's number is 320-587-4700...not sure how many concurrent calls it can handle :-)
Do we really need it anymore now that we have NTP running on most of our smartphones, computers, etc.?
I do miss the "time lady" though. Or "popcorn" - (767-2676, or 767-1111). "At the tone, the time will be, 9:38am. *BEEP*"
I was just thinking yesterday about an automated telephone game system I used to call when I was growing up in the 80's. 573-3400. I forget what it was called, but there were 3 games you could play all by 'choose your own adventure' touch-tone style choices. One was a cowboy type game, one was a vampire, and I forget what the third one was. It was all free to play for us latch-key kids. Heh. Now get off my lawn!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
The Canadian National Research Council's "telephone talking clock" is still active,
English: 613-745-1576
French: 613-745-9426
They also run an NTP server, shortwave time broadcasts, web-based clock, modem-based "simple time service", and daily time broadcasts on CBC radio.
And more. It's a time *and frequency* standard. After you completed your shortwave radio kit you'd tune WWV and "calibrate" your tuner & dial.
In my childhood in Miami, 1950's, you called "the Coca-Cola Lady"...she delivered a short pitch for Coke, then gave the time.