I saw this on the Internet a few days ago.

"SERVICE WITHDRAWAL
Effective September 2007, Time of Day information service will be discontinued.

It looks like the folks at AT-T are discontinuing this service. Does anyone remember TOD service, that Pacific Northwest Bell provide many years ago. And is TOD still being used today?

Wow, finally....

Most people just sync their cells for the time. Plus you can find many watches now under 100 bucks that get atomic time from Denver.

If you have a shortwave/longwave radio, you can
continual time clock set at GMT 24 hrs a day. There are several frequencies, generally like 5.0,
15.0 and so on depending on the band you are on.
(my good old Zenith Transoceanic comes in handy 35 years after purchase) LOL

(503)555-1212 Wasn't that the old number for TOD in PDX?

Nope. 229-1212.

You can still hear a TOD message if you call 707-767-TIME (8463). I believe this service is out of Santa Rosa, CA.

I think 555-1212 has always been a directory assistance number.

We tried to come up with the old PDX TOD number on the show this morning. None of the numbers the listeners remembered work. The only number we could get to work was 503-266-TIME.

"I think 555-1212 has always been a directory assistance number."

Still is.

In fact, I use this instead of 411 on my telephone (for some odd reason or other, 411 doesn't work properly with my rotary phone!)

What's truly strange about 555-1212 nowdays is that despite the fact that it accesses the exact same service 411 does, it doesn't cost anything to dial and use it. Last I saw, 411 cost me 75 cents to call whereas a local 555-1212, sans the area code, was completely free. Weird.

FYI, both clocks on my computers (and even my microwave and satellite receiver) are set to the time service from WWV. No, they aren't automatic via WWVB--this is standing by the clock, short-wave rig in hand, waiting for the long beep at the top of the hour! ;o)

OMG you still use a rotary phone?

I keep one in a drawer as a spare, in case my regular (not to mention, well, more modern) DTMF phone fails.

I juat happened to have that particular phone in hand when I moved into my apartment a couple of years ago and my DTMF phone did in fact fail. (Couldn't get a dial tone so I decided to test the line. Turns out the DTMF phone itself ganst kaput, not the phone line....)

Call me old fashioned, but I still find it amazing that my cell phone clock changes hours when I cross into a different time zone. Sometimes, right where the sign is posted along the highway, sometimes a minute or two earlier or later. I guess it isn't perfect! Or maybe the sign isn't posted exactly where it should be, who knows. And if this GPS technology is available in a $50 cell phone, how come it isn't in my 2007 auto?

No need to pay 75 cents to do find a business number...Google411 does it for free...

http://labs.google.com/goog411/

Telephone time via WWV:
(303) 499-7111

or WWVH:
(808) 335-4363

Your cell phone changes, because it gets its time from the closest cell tower. A GPS system gets its time from a satellite.

Dr said>>
Plus you can find many watches now under 100 bucks that get atomic time from Denver.

Verizon uses the Atomic clock for time.

Brian said>>>
OMG you still use a rotary phone?

We have one in the barn shed where I work on my cars. It works great!

555-1212 sounds like the time number in the movies!

NWokie, if my cell phone changes due to the closest cell tower, how come it changes right as I cross the time zone? How far are these towers spaced out in the middle of nowhere???

A cell phone tower covers about 10 square miles,
which means you have one about every 3 miles.

In San Jose, California and I believe most of the Bay Area -- growing up, the number for this was POP-CORN or 767-2676. I have no idea why though...

Here is one that is still functional in the Portland area:
(503) 829-3456

Huh....that sounds almost exactly like the female time announcement voice that the W7AIA repeater used to use years ago.

(Maybe still does? At the top of the hour W7AIA used to play what sounded like the NBC chimes, then the synthetic computer-generated voices would give the time, the temperature outside and the rig's call letters. Haven't heard it in several years tho.)

I think this prefix is in the Molalla area.

Were you aware that by dialing many prefixes (not all) plus 1000 will get you a 1000Hz tone?
222-1000, 228-1000 for example.
Used in the field for testing & setting levels by telco's.

I was wondering if this was ever used by any of you Radio guys for setting levels for live remotes.

I remember 555-5555 as the number for TOD service when I was a kid (this was the 80's, and GTE was the incumbant telephony provider in Forest Grove). It was probably a different number in U.S. West areas, which is most of Portland proper.

It appears that 696-1000 gives those of us who live in the Coove a 10-second (more or less) tone in all its 1kHz glory ;o)

Amus, would this be some sort of "throwback" to the days of open-band signalling (i.e. by playing a 2600-cycle tone into the phone receiver, you could do blue-boxing) by chance?

This strikes me as being something that might normally be accessible only by an MF dialler, like operators use.

Here's a parody from a few years ago:
http://www.lownoiserecords.com/wwv_the_tick.html

"PORTLAND TELEPHONE DIRECTORY, NOVEMBER 1957"
[(c) 1957, THE PACIFIC TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY]

-----------SERVICE and LONG DISTANCE CALLS------------

INFORMATION .........................................................113

REPAIR SERVICE.......................................................114

BUSINESS TRANSACTIONS......................................CA8-6261

LONG DISTANCE...................................................OPERATOR

CONFERENCE CALLS..............................................OPERATOR

SHIP TELEPHONE SERVICE......................................OPERATOR

MOBILE TELEPHONE SERVICE..................................OPERATOR
(For Automobiles, Trucks and Trains) and ask for MOBILE OPERATOR

TIME OF DAY.......................................................CA9-1212

You may DIAL 116 from any Portland, Burlington, Milwaukie-Oak Grove or Oswego telephone and say, for example:
"EMERGENCY-I WANT the PORTLAND POLICE DEPARTMENT"
"EMERGENCY-I WANT the MULTNOMAH COUNTY SHERIFF"
"EMERGENCY-I WANT the OSWEGO CITY FIRE DEPARTMENT"
Stay on the line until you know they understand where help is wanted.

I was used to getting accurate time from PNB for free on 229-xxxx for as long as I could remember (though it had to be the published "229-1212" after 1970, when other numbers were assigned to that exchange; the first being a State of Oregon's new Centrex).

When the service planted me in dozy East Wareham, Mass. in 1975, I called Operator (probably in New Bedford) to find out what the local time number was. She was baffled by my request and I was astonished to realize she'd never heard of such a thing (the first of many such little surprises about that corner of New England Bell). She offered me the time off her clock (which I later learned was the standard procedure wherever it wasn't automated), but didn't want to count off any seconds for me.

(I wonder if far southeastern MA ever got automated phone time service; they seemed to keep time by the tides and the calendar there.)

I forget when PNB began charging for the time a la 976-something, but it must have been before the early '90s, as I used a shareware DOS widget which dialed NBS Fort Collins with the modem to set my computer's clock. I figured out the brief call to Colorado at night cost less than PNB's time number (I think it was a dime toll vs. a quarter or more charge).

Thanks to Craig for the '57 phone page. That year is before my memory and I didn't realize we'd actually had a precursor of 911 here (116). It was gone by the dawn of my memory; in the sixties Peake gave out those self-adhesive plastic things to put on the handset with local police/fire (and of course funeral service) numbers (the ghost of Strowger, perhaps).

The 113 and 114 we had for Information and Repair Service are anomalies compared to the rest of the country's (usually 411 for Information; some similar number for Long Distance).

There were local ring-back and test-tone numbers; no "MF" was needed as they were intended for repairmen to test subscriber lines, and butt-sets didn't do MF. They almost certainly still exist. We kids learned the number that provided a sweep tone and would call it for fun (a big thrill for fourth-graders).

There was a number to call someone sharing your party line (both phones would ring; you'd pick up when it stopped ringing, which indicated they were on the line). What was cool in Seattle is one needn't know any "secret" number but could simply dial your own number, hang up, and your phone would ring. This might have been a test feature or perhaps so people with extensions could do an in-residence intercom call.

I was surprised to see a local number listed for the biz office, as I dimly recall in '59 or '60 (early PNB) one dialed Operator and asked for "Business Office"; I think one was connected to Seattle in those days.

Paging Jimbo...

There were mobile telephones in 1957? Was it just a patch into a two-way radio or something?

In the phone list Craig posted up, it mentioned a "Ship Phone Service". Would this have been a radio common carrier service, or perhaps a pre-cursor to the (now mostly defunct) Maritel radiophone system by chance?

FYI, Portland used to have a Maritel operator on marine radio channel 26, frq. 157.300MHz, call KOE815. (Astoria had two, on channels 26 and 28 but I forget what the call letters were.) I used to hear it IDing itself about every 10 minutes or so on my police scanner. But I think KOE815 was shut down a coupla years ago (damn cell phones...........)

Jeffery, what's a "sweep tone"? Was that the 1000Kc. tone I heard on 696-1000 or what?

At any rate now I have a new number to use when my current DTMF set fails and I need to pull the rotary set out of the drawer again......... ;o)

Paul,

The cell sites all use GPS for timing, (as do our 2Way and 1Way paging networks) that is why if you watch the time on a GPS and your cell phone it will change at the exact same time.

Nwokie is correct and you cell phone will display the time from whichever site it is receiving at that time.

I have driven to Boise several times on 84 and a couple of times the time on my phone changed real close to the time zone sign.

Other times it has taken a while, 5-10 miles, to change and once it even changed to Mountain Time and then back to Pacific Time then back to Mountain Time!

Also, not to be nitpicky, but the telephone test tone is actually 1004Hz. Why I don't know. Maybe just because they are the phone company!

Shane,

Yep. That's basically what it was. Operator assisted and wide open for anybody to listen to! Commonly referred to as MTS (Mobile Telephone Service)

There was a group (about 8 if I remember correctly) of frequencies in the 150 MHz frequency range that was dedicated to Telco’s and another group dedicated to RCC's (Radio Common Carrier's)

The way you made a call was to listen and if the channel was clear you keyed your mic and gave the mobile operator your number. When she checked and made sure you were a valid customer (i.e. paid your bill!) she asked you for the number you wanted to call. She then dialed it and patched it to the open channel.

Then in the late 60's IMTS (Improved Mobile Telephone Service) was introduced by Motorola.

It used a series of tones (not DTMF) and the radio scanned the channels for one that had "Mark Idle". When your phone would lock on that channel it would then send, for lack of a better thing to call it, a request to send tone. The terminal would send back a clear to send tone and the phone would then ID. If you were a valid subscriber it issued you dial tone and you dialed your number.

Then in the early mid 70's Secode came out with their SMART system (Secode Mobile Automatic Radio Telephone) if I remember correctly.

It used a mark busy channel and along with the audio it broadcast a 2805 Hz tone. The control head for the phone had a detector in it that detected the 2805 and put a warbling tone in the handset so you couldn't evesdrop on any of the conversation. However it notched it out for the user making the call

The SMART system was pretty much only used by RCC's but IMTS was used by both Telco's and RCC's.

Thus endeth today’s Mobile Telephone History Lesson.

My blackberry device did not change time when i recently went to Hawaii. I had to go into the setup menu and manually change the time zone setting. I waited a day just to see if it would automatically change.

on sprint btw.

Ah....the ol' CrackBerry. Say.....did anyone else have a major snafuu with them last Friday. I got shotgun messages hours late and at random and some never made it at all. Cleared up over the weekend but what the hell happened?

Skybill--

Up until a few years ago on my police scanner, tuning through the 150MHz area (somewhere around 152 MHz specificly) I used to hear a channel broadcasting a steady, high-pitch tone. The Consolidated Frequency List in my Police Call bock revealed that it was a Radio Common Carrier frequency.

In fact, one time I actually heard someone making a call on it.

I was just using the scanner a few nights ago and tuned through that area. Didn't hear it. Methinx RCC must be becoming another casualty of Cell Phones......

* sigh *

I think there are a couple of these operating in 800MHz......at least that's what I inferred by the steady tone. (Could be wrong, and maybe they could be for something else.)

I haven't called that number since I was a kid when another kid told me about it. As I got older I found I could set my Timex watch to the top of the hour tone of network radio newscasts: CBS, NBC, ABC, Mutual. Now all you have to do is right click the time on your Windows page, update internet time, and it's accurate to the atomic clock. The only people who care anymore about dialing (!) their telephone to get the time of day are REALLY REALLY old people.

Nah....they don't have to dial it...they just jangle the handle and tell Ernestine do to it for them!
http://www.vegasradioshow.com/images/Ernestine.gif

I like the new net based time synch with the national bureau of standards. I can buy masterclocks for the school district here that will synch to our ethernet time. This way our classroom clocks and audible signals are synchronized with everyone's PC or the lab PCs that the kids use.

Masterclocks still run on thier own crystal or 60hz time base chip and correct to the net when required. That way we still have independence in each school building for ringing chimes/bells etc and other stand alone operations. If the net goes down, the masterclock doesnt !

I can get these masters for about 800 bucks @ American Time and Signal. Compared to what the older Masterclocks used to cost and the way they worked, this is a windfall. As budget allows we will convert all of our 24 school buildings over to these, we have several of these online now. And you can also access the program on these masters from your networked PC if desired.

Beats the crap outtah the old days !

Motozak, what frequency was it? It could have been a paging frequency.

There are still a few carriers that use the 150 MHz frequencies (Particularly 152.240 MHz and 158.700 MHz).

"At the tone, pacific standard time will be four-nineteen and twenty seconds........BEEP!

Now that was a woman you could count on.

I miss Dial-a-Joke.

Wozniak got started providing a Dial-A-Joke service:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flNLN_kZdlU

I understand there was ONE woman who did all the timechecks on the entire AT&T system. She changed dialects from one region to another. I remember her being from the south.

Here's a more interactive, modernized version of the old "at the tone the time will be..." recording.

1-800-555-TELL (8355) and ask for "Time"

(Semoochie, ask for Eastern Time and see if her accent changes!)

I miss the Oregonian Inside Line for movie times. It was easy as hell and you could search by westside, eastside, Vancouver, etc. Then a couple of years ago they nuked it. now all we have is that stupid 1-800-Fandango that uses voice recognition technology. It's tedious and it's not local, so the "by region" movie times are not that accurate. Sure, you can go online for listings, but that does me no good in the car!

I've seen a few of the self checkouts at supermarkets with "southern" accents.

I would guess that they are all that way in the actual south.

It sounds kind of odd here in the PNW though.

Semoochie,

That was Jane Barbe, known throughout the telephone industry simply as "Jane".

http://www.etcia.com/jane_barbe.html

And you're right, she was from Atlanta.

When a company named Octel created their voice mail system they hired Jane to record the prompts so users would be comfortable with the new technology.

It paid off because that system became the industry standard, was installed by most Baby Bells, and was eventually purchased by Lucent.

And here's some audio of Jane:

http://dogwelder.vox.com/library/audio/6a00cd9782afdef9cc00e398a2e8310005.html

November 1957:

If anyone needs the number for the:

"W A C Recruiting Office" it's CA3-1985.

Skybill--

It wasn't a paging channel so far as I know. (There *is* one at 152.005 that I also have programmed into a memory number in my scanner for no particular reason other than amusement. ;o) Your mention of 152.240 sounds familiar.......there were a few other paging channels around the RCC that would broadcast what sounded like low-bandwidth data (lots of beeps, chirps and "gurgling" noises) every so often.

Although that's (likely) not the one I am thinking of......the .005 sounds almost like the .240, by the way. But it mighta been and maybe I am not remembering it correctly...........

Might not be related, but there is a rather curious station on 152.175 which at this very moment I write this is transmitting bursts of silence about 1 1/2 seconds each, followed by maybe 1/2 second pause. (Here at my place I assume I am some distance from the transmitter, as the "silence" presents itself as a hissing noise.) Could this possibly be another RCC?

Craig--

Can't remember where the building was that I saw this, but for Radio Cab, the number is CA7-1212. (I think it was on the side of the Radio Cab office downtown.) And I spotted this in 2004!!

The original AT&T 'Time Lady" was from Texas as I remember it. She had an interview on an old CBS 60 minutes , I think it was..back in the 70s. And as I recall she had a Texas accent , but knew how to get rid of it when she had to. She did some of her 'schtick' on 60 mins..AT the TOENNNN..the TIMEHMMM will BEEE...

When I was about 6 or 7 I used to call TIME and listen to the time lady for scores of minutes at a time. My mother got real mad because I was always tieing up the phone line when her friends or my dad tried to call home, back in the 50s you know. I was obscessed with the TIME lady. MY parents grounded me from the telephone more than once because of this "OCB " with the TIME LADY. As I remember it, I was facsinated about how the telephone company could do something like record someone's voice over and over again and how she sounded perfect each time.

Did any of you know that Jane Barbe's voice can be heard in the (recorded) time announcements on WWVH?

Reportedly she died of cancer in 2003.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Barbe

Personally, I actually like her voice better than the droning male voice on WWV!! ;o)

Somebody needs to setup a 900 number service!

There is money to be made right now as people all hear about the end of something they might have missed!

Call 1-900-the-time and hear the time of day, along with other interesting facts about this day in history!

I'm dead serious. People call those numbers for all sorts of goofy reasons. Work it into a contest to win some collectible thing and run the ads on late night TV, right along with the call girls.

Lots of stuff can be done. Joke of the day, do farts: "Squeak of the week." Famous quotes, all kinds of time related stuff.

Those fancy voice recognition systems could allow one to query about time zones, get a wake up call for the next day, adjusted for ones time zone differences, etc...

There were a number of time announcers over the years. Those over 50 may remember Jane Barbe's predecessor, Mary Moore ("fiyuv," "niyun"), used during the 1950s through the very early 1960s.

Jane was a talented voice actress (she'd begun on the stage) and took her mission of getting the message across clearly but politely very seriously. (She was required to be quite firm on the "You MUST dial one..." message; her "I'm sorry..." disconnected-number message has been described as "heartbreaking.") Her work will probably survive her by decades.

I read that Pacific Bell tried a younger woman for error messages in the '70s but found lonely guys would repeatedly call disconnected numbers to hear her flirtatious hippy-dippy voice, so they dropped her.

The original voice of WWV (voice announcements began in 1950) is believed to be Don Elliott (sometimes cited as Don Elliott Heald). When the drum players were retired in 1991 and the time tracks required re-recording for digital playback, John Doyle (another Atlantan Audichron tracker like Ms. Barbe, as well as a TV weathercaster) was used for a decade. A 2001 user survey revealed WWV listeners missed the familiar voice used for 40 years (he had a distinctly brisk, official, no-nonsense sound), so a little-known announcer who sounds more like Elliott named Lee Rogers was selected, and his recordings have been used since.

http://ts.nist.gov/MeasurementServices/Calibrations/upload/SP250-67.pdf pp. 14-15
http://tf.nist.gov/survey/S2d.htm

Shortwave and phone geeks who Google around enough can actually find airchecks of such historic moments as WWV shifting from Eastern Standard Time to GMT to UTC, the first leap second, etc. Several sites offer a library of Barbe recordings, and I think I even ran across one with a Mary Moore.

I've read when time service was first offered in New York City back in the 1920s, a hapless operator sat before a clock endlessly repeating the time live into a microphone. (There's a photo someplace of one on duty.) They had to shorten the shifts considerably because the tedium drove the operators nuts. This spurred R&D into the first-ever voice tracking.

(There, I managed to squeeze in a bit of board-OT at the end!)

P.S. NBC's proto-timecode voice recording (used for editing kinescopes preparatory to making "kamikaze" videotape splices, 1957) is downloadable from
http://www.sssm.com/editing/museum/offline/esg.html

Kinda' still on the subject--

This makes the telephone time service look like something from at least 200 years in the future. Here is an excerpt from an article I happen to remember reading a few years ago, dredged up, dusted off and extracted from an archive of the *entire* run of the hacker magazine "Phrack", which I "happened" to have in the hard drive of my old 386 I just found in storage recently.


==Phrack Inc==

Volume Three, Issue 30, File #10 of 12

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
=== ===
=== Western Union ===
=== Telex, TWX, and Time Service ===
=== ===
=== by Phone Phanatic ===
=== ===
=== September 17, 1989 ===
=== ===
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

..................
Then there was the Time Service, a neat thing which Western Union offered for
over seventy years, until it was discontinued in the middle 1960's. The Time
Service provided an important function in the days before alternating current
was commonly available. For example, Chicago didn't have AC electricity until
about 1945. Prior to that we used DC, or direct current.

Well, to run an electric clock, you need 60 cycles AC current for obvious
reasons, so prior to the conversion from DC power to AC power, electric wall
clocks such as you see in every office were unheard of. How were people to
tell the time of day accurately? Enter the Western Union clock.

The Western Union, or "telegraph clock" was a spring driven wind up clock, but
with a difference. The clocks were "perpetually self-winding," manufactured by
the Self-Winding Clock Company of New York City. They had large batteries
inside them, known as "telephone cells" which had a life of about ten years
each. A mechanical contrivance in the clock would rotate as the clock spring
unwound, and once each hour would cause two metal clips to contact for about
ten seconds, which would pass juice to the little motor in the clock which in
turn re-wound the main spring. The principle was the same as the battery
operated clocks we see today. The battery does not actually run the clock --
direct current can't do that -- but it does power the tiny motor which re-winds
the spring which actually drives the clock.

The Western Union clocks came in various sizes and shapes, ranging from the
smallest dials which were nine inches in diameter to the largest which were
about eighteen inches in diameter. Some had sweep second hands; others did
not. Some had a little red light bulb on the front which would flash. The
typical model was about sixteen inches, and was found in offices, schools,
transportation depots, radio station offices, and of course in the telegraph
office itself.

The one thing all the clocks had in common was their brown metal case and
cream-colored face, with the insignia "Western Union" and their corporate logo
in those days which was a bolt of electricity, sort of like a letter "Z" laying
on its side. And in somewhat smaller print below, the words "Naval Observatory
Time."

The local clocks in an office or school or wherever were calibrated by a
"master clock" (actually a sub-master) on the premises. Once an hour on the
hour, the (sub) master clock would drop a metal contact for just a half second,
and send about nine volts DC up the line to all the local clocks. They in turn
had a "tolerance" of about two minutes on both sides of the hour so that the
current coming to them would yank the minute hand exactly upright onto the
twelve from either direction if the clock was fast or slow.

The sub-master clocks in each building were in turn serviced by the master
clock in town; usually this was the one in the telegraph office. Every hour on
the half hour, the master clock in the telegraph office would throw current to
the sub-masters, yanking them into synch as required. And as for the telegraph
offices themselves, they were serviced twice a day by -- you guessed it -- the
Naval Observatory Master clock in Our Nation's Capitol, by the same routine.
Someone there would press half a dozen buttons at the same time, using all
available fingers; current would flow to every telegraph office and synch all
the master clocks in every community. Western Union charged fifty cents per
month for the service, and tossed the clock in for free! Oh yes, there was an
installation charge of about two dollars when you first had service (i.e. a
clock) installed.

The clocks were installed and maintained by the "clockman," a technician from
Western Union who spent his day going around hanging new clocks, taking them
out of service, changing batteries every few years for each clock, etc.

( continues yet... )


What a panic it was for them when "war time" (what we now call Daylight Savings
Time) came around each year! Wally, the guy who serviced all the clocks in
downtown Chicago had to start on *Thursday* before the Sunday official
changeover just to finish them all by *Tuesday* following. He would literally
rush in an office, use his screwdriver to open the case, twirl the hour hand
around one hour forward in the spring, (or eleven hours *forward* in the fall
since the hands could not be moved backward beyond the twelve going
counterclockwise), slam the case back on, screw it in, and move down the hall
to the next clock and repeat the process. He could finish several dozen clocks
per day, and usually the office assigned him a helper twice a year for these
events.

He said they never bothered to line the minute hand up just right, because it
would have taken too long, and ".....anyway, as long as we got it within a
minute or so, it would synch itself the next time the master clock sent a
signal..." Working fast, it took a minute to a minute and a half to open the
case, twirl the minute hand, put the case back on, "stop and b.s. with the
receptionist for a couple seconds" and move along.

The master clock sent its signal over regular telco phone lines. Usually it
would terminate in the main office of whatever place it was, and the (sub)
master there would take over at that point.

Wally said it was very important to do a professional job of hanging the clock
to begin with. It had to be level, and the pendulum had to be just right,
otherwise the clock would gain or lose more time than could be accommodated in
the hourly synching process. He said it was a very rare clock that actually
was out by even a minute once an hour, let alone the two minutes of tolerance
built into the gear works.

"...Sometimes I would come to work on Monday morning, and find out
in the office that the clock line had gone open Friday evening. So
nobody all weekend got a signal. Usually I would go down a manhole
and find it open someplace where one of the Bell guys messed it up,
or took it off and never put it back on. To find out where it was
open, someone in the office would 'ring out' the line; I'd go around
downtown following the loop as we had it laid out, and keep listening
on my headset for it. When I found the break or the open, I would
tie it down again and the office would release the line; but then I
had to go to all the clocks *before* that point and restart them,
since the constant current from the office during the search had
usually caused them to stop."

But he said, time and again, the clocks were usually so well mounted and hung
that "...it was rare we would find one so far out of synch that we had to
adjust it manually. Usually the first signal to make it through once I
repaired the circuit would yank everyone in town to make up for whatever they
lost or gained over the weekend..."

In 1965, Western Union decided to discontinue the Time Service. In a nostalgic
letter to subscribers, they announced their decision to suspend operations at
the end of the current month, but said "for old time's sake" anyone who had a
clock was welcome to keep it and continue using it; there just would not be any
setting signals from the master clocks any longer.

Within a day or two of the official announcement, every Western Union clock in
the Chicago area headquarters building was gone. The executives snatched them
off the wall, and took them home for the day when they would have historical
value. All the clocks in the telegraph offices disappeared about the same
time, to be replaced with standard office-style electric wall clocks.

Western Union was in a lot of other business, nearly all the first computer WAN networks used western union lines, you could get a direct connection from your office to an office in another city, or country. It was expensive, but at the time, it was the only way to connect computers, other than dial up modems.

Cool stuff. The obvious next step is to see what the clocks looked like. eBay.

The tale of a Florida station cited by the FCC for incorrect time and their CE's hilarious battle with WUTco's clock service, at Barry Mishkind's site: http://www.oldradio.com/archives/warstories/dk-we.htm

I can recall in the very early sixties these clocks were still displayed in main-street windows as a kind of advertising, though I forget just who did this; probably jewelers.

What I find rather interesting about the old Western Union clocks is their similarity to today's WWVB-controlled clocks.

In terms of function (i.e. as a "self-setting" clock) modern WWVB clocks seem to be a direct descendant of the older Western Union system I think.

Major difference is WWVB clocks are radio-controlled and service is available practically nationwide (and sometimes beyond.)

However, I imagine it could be possible to construct a WWVB receiver/controller gizmo which could be connected somehow to a Western Union clock to simulate the master clock........

And then it would be just like old times! *laughs*

This is merely theoretical, tho. The controller module would have to be constructed with a chip that controls the flow of electricity from a battery (or a plug-in AC/DC transformer) to the mechanism of the clock, based on the time signal sent by WWVB. The chipset would have to be programmed (like a timer of sorts) to supply and kill the power supply to the clock's mechanism.

Still, it might be worthy of experimentation someday, if/when I get access to a WU clock...........

it might be if anything I would say this just might be possible however, it is one of those things that just has to be tried in order to find out.

the time is now...imho

Here's another interesting thing on the phone:

Dial-A-Stream. It's a free call for me, but for a good number of folks here it's long-distance: 360-526-6238. Right now I am listening to the W0KIE on my speakerphone, effectively tying up my other phone line ;o)

http://www.recnet.com/stream/
Apparently it's based in California, but oddly enough they have a local 360 number.

(I gotta get a C-Band set for my sat receiver, but there's a problem--not enough space on the balcony.........)

But, you know what? I really can't help but think that the Guvment is behind this, using it as a surveillance system of some sort.........

Nothing on C-Band T6-1 anymore, but on T6-7 (6.2 & 6.8 audio) I hear a couple of guys discussing sat dish installation... is that it?

LaCrosse claims to have invented the WWVB-sychronized watch, and they are currently selling them for as low as $12.75 at their Outlet Store: http://www.greatbigoutlet.com/shopexd.asp?id=576

I just ordered one for my father, and have had a different model (I prefer a butterfly clasp watch band) since August, and really like it. It replaced a couple of Nexxtech ones whose buttons would jam after being opened to replace the battery. No matter how many times I tried to open them and adjust the fitting. The LaCrosse ones have no buttons, except a time zone setting that you push with a pointed object.

A local jeweler told me that Cardinal plans to enter the market around year-end. Casio is still in the business with their WaveCeptor line, but I haven't tried them.

I do have a couple of Centrios travel alarm/bedside clocks that are still working perfectly. One handles DST. The other requires you to change time zones.

Only firmware bug on any of them was my LaCrosse, which moved backwards only 59 minutes on the recent move from Daylight to Standard time. The next night (I cannot get reception in the daytime this far North (Edmonton)), it moved back the final minute.

Speaking of DST, my cable TV company provides my telephone service (NOT through the public Internet, but their own dedicated VOIP network), and they switched to Standard Time a week early, and all my phones were off by an hour all week.

The only one I remember is 225-5555 (two 2's and five 5's.) IIRC,it was the Oregonian line.

Well, I came into this discussion late (as in now). When I started reading the postings wondering about the old number, the first thought that came to mind was CApital 9-1212. That was ingrained back then. We didn't use numbers. We used the exchange name. The phone company was in downtown Portland, which was the CApital exchange. When they kept building new exchanges within the bigger ones, they needed to change. Originally, the numbers were your exchange plus four numbers. Then the had to add the fifth number. When that started filling up, they changed from the exchange name to just numbers. I still remember the phone numbers from my earlier years as a kid. Prior to age 6 we were in ATwater. Then we moved to southeast where it was SUnset 3272. That became PRospect 3272. Then that became PRospect 1-3272. Then they changed it to 771.... then that became 761 with new numbers at the end.
But I still don't remember what I had for breakfast two days ago.

The only one I remember is 225-5555 (two 2's and five 5's.) IIRC,it was the Oregonian line.
Yeah, it was the Oregonian's "Inside Line," and had a bunch of other stuff other than the time and temp. on what I think was code 1000. Most of the other stuff was sponsored by somebody or other and in the later years carried an up-to-date advertisement followed by out-of-date content.

The Columbian used to have a service very similar to the O's "Inside Line" through much of the '90s. "Infoline" I think it was called.......they had a time of day service on there, stock quotes, horoscopes and a bunch of other pre-recorded things.

I don't think they have that service any more, tho.......

Jr Tech--
According to the W0KIE web page it is, also judging by your description.

The page only mentions it being on a 6.8MHz subcarrier, nothing about 6.2......my only guess is they must have added stereo recently and haven't written it up on the site yet. (I can't test it myself currently, as I only have Ku-band LNB's on my dish.)

I wonder if they have any plans to go DVB sometime in the future?

Links outta here:
http://w0kie.com/
http://www.lyngsat.com/galaxy26.html

I understand that the internet has made things like TOD and The Inside Line less popular, but, much like radio, a verbal phone announcement leaves you free manually and visually. So I can drive and listen to an annoucement about movie times- I can't safely do that with an internet browser.