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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.
Dialing the time was popular long before the 80's, and in fact by the 80's I recall it being much less used, even if it still existed. I remember dialing the time as being more of a 1960's and 70's thing.
I suppose next you're going to tell me that people nowadays don't understand why it's called "dialing" a number. Or why it was faster to dial a number with lots of low digits than lots of high digits.
...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 :-)
Still around in the UK. Number is 123.
On the third stroke, the time, sponsored by Accurist, will be five - forty - exactly. Bip, bip, beep.
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.
Is the phone number slashdotted?
You can also dial up the audio from WWV (the time and frequency broadcast from the NIST) at 303-499-7111
To avoid seeing this message again, always shut down your computer properly by selecting Shut Down from the Start Menu.
I'm so old I remember when there was a number you could call that would tell you the date, and it would give it to you in Julian and Gregorian.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Can you still call for a proper "A" note in Austria?
Apparently yes: +43 1 21110 1507
A service by the Federal Office for Calibration and Measurement, they also offer time and a 1000 Hz tone. According to their official journal from 2010, page 5, "Verbreitung von Normalsignalen"
http://www.metrologie.at/index...
Well, at least you get an a' note at 440 Hz. However, Austrian (and German) orchestras use 443 Hz for a', and military and brass music uses 461 Hz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
I worked for the company that used to provide this service (and a lot fo other 800, 866 and 900 numbers) for the NJ and NYC areas.
It was fascinating equipment. Ancient but robust. It was a constantly turning magnetic drum that had the recording on it about 6 inches tall with a little oil reservoir on top that had to be filled every few months.
It synced against the radio signal from the Navel Observatory, which was perfect but also perfectly useless. You see, there was a short delay induce by the phone lines, so if we let it set itself we'd get irate calls as people listened to it and the radio and they weren't synced. Yes, there are those people and out of the millions of population there are enough of them. So every time the time changed for daylight savings we'd set it, and then manually speed it up by a fraction of a second until it sounded right. Mind you it still wasn't perfect - the phone line induced delay varied by distance and number of trunks, but it was close enough.
Remarkable gear. Never lost time after we set it.
LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? C. MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process.
The way GSM works is that each phone takes turns using the radio frequency. Your timeslot is half a millisecond long. Therefore the phone's timing has to be synchronized with the tower with microsecond accuracy.
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.
Years ago, in Pittsburgh, the number for the Time (and Temperature) was 391-9500 and reached the local power company, Duquesne Light. It still is, but you need to add the 412 area code now. It is still my "go to" number for testing a phone line when I don't want to bother a friend.
I had a small business and we added a private unlisted line. The installer wasn't even out the door yet when we got our first wrong number call on it. Wrong numbers continued throughout the afternoon and evening. People wouldn't say anything, they would just hang up. Finally I managed to get someone to talk to me, and they told me what number they were calling. It was 391-9500. Our new number was 931-9500. It hit me. We were getting an incredible number of wrong numbers where people transposed the first two digits trying to call for the time.
After I understood what the issue was the line became a lot of fun. If you answered the phone with "Hi. What time is it?" people usually knew what time it was and would tell you. If you answered with "Time and Temperature. Time speaking" you could often strike up a long conversation. I often told the story of how I screwed up and put my lunch on the tape reels of the time announcing machine and now my boss was making me answer all of the calls and give the time until the machine was fixed.
The power company would start each call with a little promo message such as "Electricity is your biggest bargain. Electric time is ..". I enjoyed answering in my best announcer voice "We can raise your rates whenever we want and there is nothing that you can do about it. Electric time is ...". I fondly remember one caller saying to someone else after that message "Boy, they are getting rude".
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Musicians do, and those listening to music also do even if they are not aware of it. If you read the wiki article you will also see that it's more complex than Germans making a useless standard.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
In my childhood in Miami, 1950's, you called "the Coca-Cola Lady"...she delivered a short pitch for Coke, then gave the time.
I remember way back before the internet if you needed to know what time the movies were at, you called the theaters movie hotline. If you didn't catch the weather on last nights news, you could call your local tv stations weather hotline for a recording of the forecast. At the store they use to manually imprint your credit card with out knowing if the card was even valid, turn that slip into their bank in the next 3-5 days, the bank would process the transaction.
And 440Hz was not good enough, it had to be 443Hz?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Whenever it's too dark to see the clock, you can just call any random number. Whoever answers always says 'Are you crazy? It's 3:45 in the morning!'" - A comedian I can't recall
Still works indeed. Cost me four cents or so in Google Voice credits to call it, probably, but it worked.
It depended on the switch. The default settings on AT&T/Lucent 5ESS switches gave you a busy signal if you called your own terminal number. The default settings on the Northern DMS's was to provide two ring cycles on your line.
There were loads of test numbers out there. Some provided a busy, some provided ringback, some provided TAC access to the CO test line, and some provided an automated call to test translations. Those numbers still exist, but they change on a regular basis. It used to be that you could call the operator (0) and ask for those services directly, using the phone company terminology. If you wanted your caller-id, you asked the operator for the "Drop Line ID". Going to the test line you asked for the "Turn Line" or the "M&T line"
In the 60's I'd be scanning the shortwave frequencies and run across WWVand it always made me pause. A station that just tick-tocked and then some dude would say the time and start tick-tocking again. I knew what it was but it always made me stop for a moment. It was just sort of surreal.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.