Telephony nostalgia -- dialing POP-CORN for free time of day [Telecom]

We had a thread today (Saturday, 17 May 2014) in ba.internet that I felt readers of comp.dcom.telecom might find interesting noting "ba.*" is Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area.

From: Thad Floryan Newsgroups: ba.> >>

>> >>> I think that Sonic must have programmed this into their switching >>> system. Cute. >> >> Huh.. I just tried this on the voice portion of my Fusion service and >> got "Cannot be completed as dialled". So I guess it's not programmed in >> the switch I'm on, whatever that may be. >> >> I recall reading that the old Pacific Telephone time box lived in Palo >> Alto, which explained why it sounded so far away in Redding and so close >> at my uncle & aunt's house in Menlo Park. > > It might not be in every area code. I'm in 408.

Hi Steve,

Googling "popcorn time number california" finds this as the first hit:

Time of day calling it quits at AT&T - Los Angeles Times

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followed by these relevant items on the first page of hits:

Speaking clock - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Telephone Time Lady: POPCORN No More! - YouTube

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Telephone Milestone: AT&T Terminates POPCORN Time ...

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Topic: No More POP-CORN After Sept 19th - AT&T Time Service

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Doni: It's time to say farewell to dependable, available ...

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The first entry at the "socialwave" site has this comment:

" All things come to an end and it looks like the time of day " service that has been offered by one company or another since " 1929 is ending. On Sept 19th, you will no longer get the time of " day when you call POP-CORN in Northern California. Or 853-XXXX in " Southern California. " " The move will allow AT&T to retire aging equipment that they said " can no longer be repaired. Probably more importantly, it allows " for 300,000 phone numbers to be freed up. " " While I'm saddened to hear of this bit of comfort technology " getting put out to pasture, it's interesting to read about the " device that is used to produce the time recordings. It's not " digitized. It's some funky series of drums that turn and churn " out the recorded time.

The redding.com site has this line in their article: " [...] " The Bee story also said that when AT&T dumps POPCORN, it will " gain about 300,000 new phone numbers that were reserved just " for giving time. " [...]

So there was a good reason (then) for dropping POPCORN.

Thad

Reply to
Thad Floryan
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In discussions of the end of telephone time and weather services, one thing I notice seems to be overlooked is that in most urbanised NPAs, there's bound to be at least one active airport or private airfield. Airports, especially those wherein the National Weather Service has a presence, operate weather announcement machines that provide weather information and Zulu time to pilots in a standardised format, using a computerised voice. These are called ASOS services, and are usually available via VHF radio broadcasts and telephone. (This is different from ATIS, which also generally includes information about the airport's runway and facilities, though in some very small airfields like KVUO the ASOS broadcast *is* the ATIS.) Thus, most NPAs should have at least one or more ASOS lines you can call into to obtain the time and the local weather.

ASOS lines are intended for civilian public usage and apart from regular long-distance tolls, it costs nothing to call an ASOS. In my part of 503, the magic number is 284-6771 (try it). These things are all over the nation; the Web site airnav.com lists them along with the radio frequencies (attention monitors!) for each local airport, thus it is a valuable resource to obtain your local ASOS number/s. Weather reports are given in metric and nautical measurements, but all one has to know to obtain their local time is their time zone's offset from GMT - for me it's -0800 (or -0700 when daylight time is in effect).

Thus, while the telephone companies may be discontinuing their private, (usually) ad-based time services for whatever reason, time and weather via telephone is far from dead.

References:

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Reply to
MotoFox

Ages ago, I had written (and must now bring up-to-date) the following:

Alas, now that it's Frontier running the old SNET telecomms show, that lovely and useful old SPRINGS number has been retired. Dial it, like I did recently, and an interrupt urges you to "Make sure you have the right number and have dialed (are dialing?) it correctly." Sad! (Sigh!)

Cheers, -- tlvp

Reply to
TLVP

WWV's time signal can be accessed by phone.

+1-303-499-7111 (Boulder, CO) or Naval Observatory at +1-202-762-1401 (Washington, DC)

You may have to wait up to 60 seconds as time is only announced on the minute, with 1 sec "ticks" in between.

Checked it just now, and my Mac updated its clock "exactly" on the minute. It is sourced to time.apple.com

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Reply to
Retired

617-NERVOUS still works.
Reply to
Michael Moroney

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