Time of Day Calling It Quits!!! (Los Angeles, Fortuna: house, movies, living in)

[mrsgenealogy]

Time of Day Calling It Quits???!!!

I guess this service used to be available all over the country but it is almost a thing of the past. Californians are still able to call a certain number 24/7 to find out the time and sometimes temperature. That will soon be just a memory.

I just found out that AT&T is going to be canceling this service in CA on Sept. 18th so if you want to listen to a piece of history, you'd better call soon. They say it has gone away in 48 other states, already. I found an article on it from the L A Times and am giving you the link here:

Time of day calling it quits at AT&T - Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus29aug29,0,7634434.column?page=2&coll=la-home-business - broken link)

One cool thing about the article is that it links you to a site where you can actually listen to recordings of a couple of the most famous voices that we all heard a lot during our lives. It's quite a fascinating story!

Anyway, if it strikes you as such a big deal as it did me, you may want to share the article with a few of your friends and family. There is a link provided at the site of the article or you can just send that link in an email or post in a forum.

Have a great day, everyone!

MrsG...born & raised in CA but living in the Ozarks, now.

[Reivax]

Wow.
That's sad.
Even, as the article says, getting the time of day is easy with cell phones and so on, I always counted on getting the "correct" time from 853-1212
But I guess my cell is correct
Still, it's sad.

[fishbowl]

Oh, how sad. I grew up checking the time on the phone as a kid. I think the only clock in the house was my mother's alarm clock. What a memory!

Janet

[katie45]

I haven't used the phone to call for time/weather in so long that I didn't even know it was still in service anywhere. For those that depended on it, it would seem like an inconvenience to look at the clock on their computer, or when you turn on the television and check the onscreen guide. But if one wanted it to the exact second, maybe those methods wouldn't be the best.

The times are a'changin.

[Charles]

For the ultra nerds out there:

My dad used to walk around with his shortwave radio tuned to WWV, and black shoes and white socks, Barry Goldwater glasses, and bathrobe...you get the picture.... and set all of our clocks...."tick..tick..tick...at the tone coordinated universal time will be...."

No wonder I'm nuts.

NIST Radio Station WWV

Coordinated Universal Time - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[UseJeff]

Ack, there was a number I could have been calling to get the time of day??!! All this time I've been using a sun dial or star charts to figure it out!

One side note based on the original post. Anytime a website allows you to "e-mail this article" to friends or family, know that you could be putting their e-mail into a database that is used and/or sold to mailing lists. I never use the site, just copy/paste the link into my own generated e-mail.

Technology has changed so much... I remember calling the time number to set my Armitron digital watch from my phone that had a cord that could stretch into the other room (that cord was high tech!). I remember getting prank calls and wondering who they were, and thinking "I wish they had some way to tell you who called!" Then I'd just go sit down in front of the TV and click on that crappy black box with the red digital numbers and flip through my 39 channels thinking, nuts I missed my favorite show...I wish there was some way to record this without setting my VCR! VCR? Hrm, can't seem to remember what a VCR is anymore... Since I missed my show I just ended up playing Pong and calling it a night... I wasn't a Dynasty fan anyways so it all worked out! Fortunately I didn't have long to wait until someone came out with a huge brick with an antenna attached that let me call people outside of my house...

Getting back to the present, I now have a 1/2 inch X 1/2 inch memory chip in my phone that can store the same amount of data that it would have taken a warehouse to store the same amount of info about 25 years ago... Let's just hope that we don't end up like the terminator movies!!!

[Sorcerer68]

I hadn't called it in 15 years but just did and it made me feel all warm and fuzzy...and sad too.