I remember it as UL 3-1212, which is kind of odd since letter prefixes were not in common use when I was a kid. I guess that’s the way my mother learned it and that’s what she taught me. It worked in Orange County and Los Angeles despite different area codes, so I assumed it was a national number and only learned otherwise tonight. As others have mentioned, it was only the first three numbers that mattered. After discovering this I occasionally amused myself by dialing 853-FUCK. The voice always sounded so prim and proper.
“The time lady” is apparently alive and well in Britain and known as the speaking clock.
I grew up in No. VA and TI4 + any four numbers got you the time, and I thought that worked anywhere in the US with any area code. I’m in Kabul, but anyone care to try it.
I grew up in California, where the prefix 767 and any four digits would get you the time lady. Most people remembered it as POPCORN (767-2676), however. It would say, “At the tone, pacific daylight time will be six thirteen and forty seconds… <beep>. At the tone, pacific daylight time will be six thirteen and fifty seconds…<beep>.” The message was ten seconds long, and it would continue indefinitely. At one point we had three-way calling, which was kind of a new feature, and I remember my brother and I goofing around and calling the time service at the same time as another person so they would answer the phone and be confused (hey, we were dorks). We were totally delighted when one of our friends on the other end of the phone shouted to whoever was in the room with her, “oh my god, the popcorn lady called me!”
I always had the notion that it was a ‘replacement’ for the days when the phones were still connected by live operators - back then you could just ask the operator if they had the time. (The live operators might not be ultra-accurate, I admit.)
Watches and clocks were not particularly accurate until quartz and electric movements were developed. A clock could lose or gain minutes over a day, so it was worthwhile to check the time from time to time.
Also, not everyone had watches.
Finally, they were making money for the phone company (you paid for the call if you didn’t have unlimited calling, and they’d sell ads for them).
In the 60s and 70s a lot of our clocks and watches were either wind-up mechanical devices or electrical motor-powered but without any cool quartz chips. The battery-powered devices were often miserably wrong. Accuracy on the AC powered ones was not even so great. The power might go out and then you had to reset your electric clocks. Gonna depend on your windups? They are 8 minutes apart from each other!
Also, it was a local number you could foist off on your toddler kids who really really wanted to have the fun of making a telephone call!
Akron, Ohio, was 762-0111 for all my life. When the sponsor (bank? utility company?) sponsoring it announced it was discontinuing it, the Akron Beacon Journal stepped in.
Yeah, and I’d tell my friends that I had my OWN, PRIVATE number for time: POP, and then my first name.
Then again, I also pitied the woman whose job it was to sit there 24 hours a day and say the time over and over again. “Does she ever get distracted and say the time wrong?” I thought.
The live operators are not ultra-accurate because they are not allowed to be, at least these days. I was one from 2003-2005, and even in that so-called modern era, people called to ask us for the time all the time. We were told that we were only allowed to offer “approximate time”, which we did by looking up at the clock on the wall. This was because some law apparently now banned the phone company from offering the exact time and temperature, and they were supposed to open up the competition to other businesses. I know that the Twin Cities had (maybe still has) a commercially-run number with advertising. (We were not allowed to give out that number, or any number, because that required a call to directory assistance, which was run by the folks across the room. “0” is free, “411” costs money. You’re not getting nuttin’ for free.)
The problem was that, while perhaps Twin Cities businesses were willing to pony up the money for a time/temp line, our office also served many rural areas which now basically had no such service now that the phone company discontinued it. Or perhaps those people never got used to calling those numbers in the first place and always called “0”. I’m not sure. All I know is that when you’re out in the sticks and your power goes out, “approximate time” is good enough for many people. We also would get asked for the date more often than you might think (no one told me I couldn’t give the exact date, so when budget cuts discontinued the calendar on the wall, I bought one to keep at my workstation.) You have no idea how many confused old people there are out there and the service we offered by letting them call us so their relatives get some rest.
Noone’s mentioned yet the modern equivalent: www.time.gov
EDIT: wow, there must be something wrong with my computer’s clock. It synchronized last night but is already 15 seconds off. Btw, I remember this site was exactly the same 9 years ago. It’s weathering time well.
Here in San Antonio, you call CApitol 6-3232, and you get the “time lady” for the Frost Bank. You also get a 5 second bank promo and the downtown temperature.
It was working back in the mid-sixties, and probably went back much farther than that, and still works today.
Funny how the ladys voice doesn’t seem to have changed after all these years.
