Speaking Clock

RickAns

RickAns

Dedicated Member
I remember an episode where Foggy impersonates the Speaking Clock. This got me wondering recently how many of us used to call that service with any regularity back in the day. Don't imagine many do nowadays with most having a cell phone or clocks or watches that connect to a server somewhere to automatically get calibrated to an atomic clock.

I believe I called the Speaking Clock a time or two when I was a kid back in the rotary phone days. Did it more as a novelty to see what it was once I heard about it. I remember having a watch to wind up before getting a battery powered one. Don't recall being being too concerned with it's time accuracy. Just set it according to whatever clock was nearby. Seems with most having a clock on their cellphone that watches fell out of favor a bit. Now with fitness apps on wrist wearables watches of a sort may be making a return. Since cell phones are so popular I hardly ever see a payphone anymore. They used to be on nearly every street corner.

Mostly what I wondered is if you are one of them that used to call the Speaking Clock is why? Was it to set your wind-up clocks and watches? Was it because you did not have a clock or watch nearby and needed the time? How often did you call - daily, weekly? Didn't in the UK each call from home cost money? I recall some shows in which someone wanted to make a call and the phone owner wanted payment for it. Just curious how it was used in peoples day to day lives. Thanks.
 
Thanks, Terry. I am curious as to how or if it was used in someones daily life. Or if it was a novelty that was rarely used. I figure the desire to know the exact time needed to be more than the cost of the call.
 
One of the speaking clocks features in an early episode of Only Fools and Horses when Del moves in an old girlfriend against Rodney and Grandad's wishes and in the end Del gives in and dumps her . When they return to the flat as revenge she has called TIM the American version and left the call open . The Grandad picks the phone up and says there's someone called TIM on the phone from America and isn't it great .Del of course screams for him to hang up as its costing a fortune .

I also recall there were number to hear a music track and even dial a recipe . I also remember most homes only had one phone normally in the passage or Hallway and trying to get some privacy to talk to a girl you might be going out with. You can hear your Dad shouting in the background " Is he bloody mooning over that girl on the bloody phone again! Other people want to use that !!!! " followed by the inevitable "You hang up ,no you hang up " exchange between you and the girl interrupted by your Dad bounding down the stairs and shouting "I'll bloody hang up " while pressing down the receiver buttons , happy days.:)
 
I remember all those types of phones. My Grandmother's house WAS the telephone exchange back in the day and I can {just} remember it there. My mother had to "woman" the phones there as a kid when Gran was busy doing other things. She remembers getting the phone call to/from the police when the first air raid warning was given to the Edinburgh area early in WW2, so one of the first people to know a raid was coming was a 10ish year old girl!!
 
RickAns said:
I remember talk of shared phones like you mentioned. Also of shared lines that could get crossed and someone else's conversation getting mixed in with yours. That was before my use of a phone.
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In the UK they were called party lines, many exchanges were oversubscribed so if you were lucky they would offer you a party line, in the dry months they were problematic as to work it relied on a good earth connection, so when you pressed the extra switch on the phone it would either give you dial tone or you would hear the shared parties conversations, the earth wire ran from the phone, via a junction box to the outside and was buried in soil, when the soil dried out no more earth connection, in summer months it was not uncommon to see GPO engineers with watering can's soaking the area around the earth wire, happy days
 
Wow, Brian talk about a world changing moment for your Mom when she got the call about the air raid warning. Especially at such a young age to get news like that.

What a great bit of information to know about a good earth connection and the phone lines, Terry. Having to water the area around the wires to restore the connection, brilliant. Something I never would have thought about before.

I had to look up what a trimphone was, captain. Seems they are mostly a UK model. Here is a bit of nostalga for ya. Chirp, chirp.
 
I don't need the speaking clock, I have my own personal speaking clock. Every few minutes it yells at me, "Isn't it time you cleaned the windows?" or "It's time you hoovered the floor", or "What time are you thinking of getting off your backside?" or "Are you planning on having a shave this month?" or "Wake up you idle moron, it's time you cut the lawn". My reply to all these suggestions is censored.:mad:
 
Spot on Roger! He was in one of the early nudist films "The Nudist Story" from the early 60's (Also known as "Members Only" or rather more detestable..."Pussycats Paradise"). I am not sure if he was the FIRST male voice of not but he was certainly one of the best known.

The film itself isn't actually too bad...for its time. The story line is quite strong as are the performances. Some of the scenes are a bit silly, but is IS of its day.
 
maltrab said:
In the UK they were called party lines, many exchanges were oversubscribed so if you were lucky they would offer you a party line, in the dry months they were problematic as to work it relied on a good earth connection, so when you pressed the extra switch on the phone it would either give you dial tone or you would hear the shared parties conversations, the earth wire ran from the phone, via a junction box to the outside and was buried in soil, when the soil dried out no more earth connection, in summer months it was not uncommon to see GPO engineers with watering can's soaking the area around the earth wire, happy days
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They were called party lines here in the States, too. The valley where I grew up had 8-party lines. That meant that the phone was to be used only for emergency calls because one of the other parties might need to use the phone. When ours was installed, there were so few subscribers that the numbers were only four digits. I barely remember picking up the receiver and waiting for the operator to say, "Number, please." It isn't that I'm all that old — it's that I grew up in, and still live in, a thinly-populated area. Dial phones were installed not long after my earliest memories of telephones, but I didn't escape the tyranny of the party line until I was earning a high-enough salary to move to town.
 
RickAns said:
Thanks, Terry. I am curious as to how or if it was used in someones daily life. Or if it was a novelty that was rarely used. I figure the desire to know the exact time needed to be more than the cost of the call.
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I used the US equivalent weekly for many years because early video recorders weren't connected to anything that let them access the correct time. The first several that I owned tended to lose time up to about a minute per week, so I'd call the NIST Time & Frequency service every Sunday morning to correct the recorder clock before it lost so much time that I missed the start of my favorite shows.
 
RickAns said:
Thanks, Terry. I am curious as to how or if it was used in someones daily life. Or if it was a novelty that was rarely used. I figure the desire to know the exact time needed to be more than the cost of the call.
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I think it was a good way of checking your clocks and watches back in the day
 
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