Speaking clock

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A speaking clock service is used for people who wish to know the correct and accurate time. Speaking clock services are most commonly accessed by telephone.

The format of the service is somewhat similar to those in radio time signal services. Every ten seconds or so, a voice announces "At the third stroke, it will be twelve, forty six and ten seconds...", for example, with three beeps following. At the third beep, the time at that point is the time announced previously.

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[edit] Australia

In Australia, the number 1194 gives the speaking clock in all areas and from all providers. It is always the current time from where the call originates. A male voice says "at the third stroke, it will be (hours, minutes/exactly, and seconds/exactly) (three beeps)" eg. "At the third stroke, it will be three thirty three and forty two seconds ... beep beep beep".

Prior to automatic systems, the subscriber rang an operator who would quote the time from a central clock in the exchange with a phrase such as "The time by the exchange clock is...". This was not precise and the operator could not always answer when the subscriber wanted.

In 1954, British made systems were installed in Melbourne and Sydney. The mechanical Speaking Clock used rotating glass discs where different parts of the time were recorded on the disc. A synchronous motor drove the disc with the driving source derived from a 5 MHz Quartz Oscillator via a multi stage valve divider. This was amplified to give sufficient impetus to drive the motor. Because of the low torque available, a hand wheel was used to spin the motor on start up.

The voice was provided by Gordon Gow.

The units were designed for continuous operation. Both units in Melbourne & Sydney were run in tandem (primary & backup).

For Daylight Saving changes, one would be on line while the second was advanced or retarded by one hour and at the 02:00:00 Australian Eastern Standard time, would be switched over to the standby unit.

As well as the Speaking clocks, there was ancillary equipment to provide timing signals, 1 pulse per second, 8 pulses per minute and 8 pulses per hour.

The Time & Frequency Standards Section in the PMG Research Laboratories at 59 Little Collins Street, Melbourne maintained the frequency checks to ensure that the system was "on time".

From a maintenance point of view, the most important part of the mechanical clocks was to ensure that they were well oiled to minimise wear on the cams and to replace blown globes in the optical pickups from the glass disk recordings.

When Time & Frequency Standards moved from 59 Collins Street to Clayton, the control signals were duplicated and a second bank of Caesium Beam Primary standards installed so the cutover was transparent with no loss of service.

This mechanical system was replaced with a digital system in 1990.

Each Speaking Clock ensemble consisted of two announcing units (Zag 500), a supervisory unit (CCU 500), two phase locked oscillators, two pulse distribution units, a Civil Time Receiver, (plus a spare) and two or four Computime 1200 baud modems.

The voice was provided by Richard Peach.

The various components were sent for commercial production after a working prototype was built in the Telstra Research Laboratory (TRL). Assmann Australia used a German announcing unit and built a supervisory unit to TRL specifications.

Design 2000 incorporated TRL oscillators in the phase locked oscillator units designed at TRL and controlled by two tone from the Telstra Caesium Beam Frequency Standards.

Ged Company built Civil Time Receivers. The Civil Time Code generators and two tone generators were designed and built within TRL.

Each State Capital had a Digital Speaking clock for the local time of day with one access number Australia wide, 1194.

In 2002 the Telstra 1194 service was migrated to Informatel (who use their own technology - but kept the original voice of Richard Peach), whilst the other time services (e.g. hourly pips to radio stations) was retained as a service by Telstra.

In May 2006 the remain Telstra services were withdrawn and the digital hardware was decommissioned.

[edit] Canada

In Canada, the National Research Council (NRC) is the federal agency responsible for official time.

NRC time is referred to its primary cesium atomic clocks designed, built, and maintained at the NRC time standards laboratory in Ottawa.

The NRC provides a Speaking Clock service; voice announcements of Eastern Time are made every 10 seconds, followed by a tone indicating the exact time. This service is available to the general public by phoning (613) 745-1576 for English service and (613) 745-9426 for French service. Long distance charges apply for those calling from outside the Ottawa-Gatineau area.

The English message, from an older male voice, is in the following format: "NRC, Eastern (Standard/Daylight) Time, x hours, x minutes, and x seconds." This is followed by a single beep. The word "exacte" replaces "and x seconds" at the top of the minute. Additionally, there is a tick every second in the background.

NRC also provides short wave radio time signal broadcasts, on specific frequencies (3330 KHz, 7335 KHz and 14670 KHz) as well as on the English (CBC Radio) and French (Radio-Canada) radio networks of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation once per day; the former at 13:00 and the latter at 12:00 Eastern Time.

The NRC also supports Network Time Protocol (NTP) as well as a web-based clock service.

More details are available on the NRC web site. [1] [2] [3]

[edit] France

In France, the speaking clock (horloge parlante) is available on 36.99 from within France, or +33 8.36.99.xx.xx from other countries (where x can be anything).

[edit] Russia

In Russia, in most cities you dial 100 to hear the current time. These calls are free, if made from non-mobile phones. At one time in Moscow there were advertisements before and after the announcement of the current time; this practice has since ceased.

[edit] Sweden

The speaking clock (Swedish: Fröken Ur, meaning Miss Clock) in Sweden has been in service since 6th October 1934, and can be reached by dialling 90510 (+46 33 90510 from outside Sweden). Four women have contributed with their voices for the service: Eva Ulvby (1934-1956), Berit Hofling (1956-1968), Ebba Beckman (1968-2000), Johanna Östlund (2000-). More details at [4]

[edit] United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, the speaking clock can be reached by dialling 123. On BT's sponsored Timeline, a male voice (Brian Cobby) announces:

"At the third stroke, the time sponsored by (sponsor) will be (hour) (minute) (and (second) seconds / precisely)"

The announcement is then followed by three beeps. At the third beep (or 'stroke') the time is that which was announced previously. Other operators run their own speaking clocks with broadly similar formats, or seem to redirect to BT's service.

Speaking clock services are not, in fact, always useful for amateur scientific purposes, since the time feed for the speaking clock is not always ensured to be exactly accurate, plus time delays through the telephone. However the BT service is assured to be accurate to five thousandths of a second.

A speaking clock service first started in Britain, from July 24, 1936. It was obtained by dialling the letters TIM (846) on a dial telephone, and hence the service was often colloquially referred to as "Tim". However this code was only used in the telephone systems of the cities of London/Birmingham/Edinburgh/Glasgow/Liverpool and Manchester. Other areas initially dialled 952 but with the introduction of Subscriber Trunk Dialling it was changed to 80 and later 8081 as more 'recorded services' were introduced. It was standardised to 123 by the early 1990's.

There have been five different voices heard on the British Speaking Clock, with Jane Cain being the voice from 1936 to 1963, Pat Simmons from 1963 to 2 April 1985, and Brian Cobby since then. Comedian Lenny Henry provided the voice for two weeks as part of Comic Relief fund-raising in March 2003. A 12-year-old girl from Scotland, Alicia Roland, was the voice of the speaking clock for a week in October 2003 after winning a competition.

In 1986 it allowed Accurist to sponsor its franchise, the first time a sponsor had been used for the service.

During the Cold War, the British Telecom speaking clock network was designed to be used in case of nuclear attack to broadcast messages from Bomber Command to HANDEL units at regional police stations. From there, automatic warning sirens could be started and alerts sent to civil defence volunteers equipped with manual warning devices. The rationale for using an existing rather than a dedicated system was that it was effectively under test at all times, rather than being activated (and possibly found to be faulty) only in the event of war. The signals to automatic sirens were sent down the wires of individual (unaware) subscribers for the same reason - a customer would report any fault as soon as it occurred, whereas a problem with a dedicated line would not be noticed until it was needed.

A version of the speaking clock was also used on recordings of the House of Parliament made by the BBC Parliament Unit, partly as a time reference and partly to prevent editing. On a stereo recording, one track was used for the sound and the other for an endless recording of the speaking clock - without the pips, as these were found to cause interference.

On the occasion of a leap second, such as at 23:59:60 on the 31st December 2005, there is a one second pause before the beeps, thus keeping the speaking clock in sync with Coordinated Universal Time [5]. The current source of UK time is provided by the National Physical Laboratory, UK.

On 23 October 2006, to mark the BT clock reaching its 70th year, a competition was launched to find the new modern voice of the Speaking Clock. Applicants were invited to leave telephone recordings of their voice with the proceeds of each call going to Children in Need. Sara Mendes da Costa, a telemarketer and part-time voiceover artist, was announced as the winner on BBC One's Children in Need telethon on 17 November 2006. [6]

[edit] United States

In the United States, a speaking clock can be reached by ringing various numbers, depending on the location of the caller. For all area codes in Northern California, the number is 767-2676, and is often indicated by its telephone acronym, POPCORN. The speaking clock service is actually active for all numbers of the format 767-xxxx, but "POPCORN" is the most popular acronym, and is even used in common speech. Officially, the telephone number listed for the time recording is 767-8900.

In other locations, different telephone exchanges are used for the speaking clock service. In these areas, the numbers are usually quoted with the -xxxx or -1212 ending. For example,

Various other numbers are used, such as 844-1414 in other localities.

Every ten seconds, a mature female voice, the samples often having been read by the late Jane Barbe, announces the time of day according to this formula: "Good (morning / afternoon / evening). At the tone, (time zone) (standard / daylight) time will be (hour):(o'clock / minute) (exactly / and (n) seconds)," followed by a one-second tone. The seconds portion is always given in multiples of ten, or is omitted for the word "exactly". For example, such as message could be:

"Good morning. At the tone, Pacific Standard Time will be 9:52 and ten seconds. tone"

Many shortwave radio time signal services provide speaking clock services, such as WWV and WWVH, operated by the National Bureau of Standards from the United States of America. To avoid disruption with devices who rely on the accurate timings and placement of the service tones from the radio, the voice recording may be "notched" clear of some of the tones. Jane Barbe also provides the voice for WWVH.

The time as provided by WWV is also available by telephone, by ringing (303) 499-7111. WWVH is available on (808) 335-4363.

In addition, the United States Naval Observatory operates two speaking clocks: in Washington, D.C. on (202) 762-1401, and in Colorado Springs, Colorado on (719) 567-6742

Electronic speaking clocks and wristwatches are available, many marketed to the visually impaired.

Many telephone answering machines and similar devices include a speaking clock capability so they can announce the time when a message was received.

[edit] References in popular culture

  • The intro to the song "Blowin' Hot Air" by The Click features a sample taken from the speaking clock
  • The intro to the song "4-2-0" by Kottonmouth Kings features a sample taken from the speaking clock, announcing that the time is 4:20.
  • In The Simpsons episode "Brother from the Same Planet", Lisa conquers her addiction to the Corey hotline by listening to the speaking clock.
  • The first song on the album Albedo 0.39 by Vangelis, Pulstar, ends with the voice of the speaking clock, announcing that the time is 10:03 and 40 seconds.
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