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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 :-)
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.
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.
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.
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.