Speaking clock
As time announcement and call a value-added service is called, which is always available and each local zone time (in Central Europe CET or CEST, even legal or civil time ) every 10 seconds on the second announces exactly.
History
The first devices that help could know the exact time via the telephone network caller, provided the time with chime, but not with language. In Germany the first facility on August 1, 1909, taken at the observatory in Hamburg operation and turned to the Hamburg local network. Each telephone subscriber from whose port of the Hamburg local network was reached, could listen to " telephonic time signal " that. The time signal consisted of two sound character; the first was at the full minute, the second a full five minutes step. Every minute, came from second 55 to second 60, a " siren -like sound ." The end of the sound showed the full minute. In every fifth minute ( on the minute: 05,: 10,: 15, etc. ) came minutes after the signal a " rattling noise alarm clock ". Tentatively were connections to the time signal from Copenhagen in particular, Wiesbaden, Cologne, Munich and Paris prepared with the time signal was easily audible. Source of the time signal was an astronomical pendulum clock, which was associated with the master clock of the observatory. She gave to the Central European Time, with a deviation of no more than half a second.
Already in 1910 a Berlin manufacturer has a wall clock with time announcement produced and distributed. The company called itself " The time ansa following clock GmbH". A gear train reeled every quarter of an hour, or even to the touch of a filmstrip to the appropriate location, a diaphragm descended and said at the time. As of 1920, attempts were made to talk time prompts for commercial purposes on gramophone records, but could the then-known audio playback, such as the phonograph by Thomas Alva Edison, or Tele Phonograph by Valdemar Poulsen by the mechanical scanning of the high demands for the not meet continuous operation. The playback speed was too variable and the playing time of the device to short.
The world's first regular operation of a speaking time announcement was made on 14 February 1933, France from Paris Observatory in operation. The announcement machine worked at constant temperature and atmospheric pressure after the optical sound, the first method, which was up to the load in continuous commercial operation. The technique you had copied from the introduced optical sound in movie theaters. In the film, the sound track to a movie besides the actual images was recorded and was scanned without contact. On a cylinder with three track records every 10 seconds was first played the track with the current hour, then with the full minute and finally on to the next trendy seconds in 10 -second increments, followed by the announcement of the time signal. Three photocells read and amplified the sound. The photographs spoke Marcel Laporte. The service was designed for 20,000 participants every day and was overloaded on the first day.
In 1954, the method has been ported to machines with three rotating optical discs, each a " record " for hour, minute and second. In Sydney, two machines went into operation; one for regular operation, the other as backup. The machine with the voice of the actor Gordon Gow was replaced only in 1990 and taken after its restoration at the Sydney Observatory to visitors again in operation.
In 1958, the Light Sound has been replaced by a Magnetic - time announcement with tapes. The large-scale plant was manufactured by Siemens & Halske in Nuremberg. Timer was the " master clock " of the exchange. Then the seconds were reproduced in increments during the procedure. It was followed by the still known today announcement " This day it is at 13 clock, 15 minutes and 20 seconds ". This announcement has been announced exactly every 10 seconds.
1963 machine with magnetic drum was put into operation in the UK. She was until 1984 in use. Since then, a digital system with no moving parts in operation.
1969 Light Sound was replaced by electromagnetic recording in the Netherlands also.
Here came a rotating magnetic disk with multiple tonearms used: Mechanical (later quartz ) watches controlled the tone arm of the turntable, the magnetic pickups - instead of a needle - a magnetic disk ( almost a flat tape) abtasteten on which, for example, the minute announcement
was stored on sixty concentric tracks.
Through timed relay so was a time announcement as
Since the turn of the century the use of the speaking clock sinks; the exact time is available by radio clocks, teletext, the Internet and mobile phones and smartphones. On 19 September 2007 for the first time provided a telephone service provider, AT & T in California, the speaking clock service a.
Germany
In the early days of the manual switchboard, the officers also had the task to tell the participants to get the time in the central office. The official reading of the exact clock then simply the time off and shared this with the caller. In Hamburg, this labor-intensive service could be availed by calling 44 441 10 Penny. After the staff reduction ordinance of October 27, 1923 were allowed to be used for this service only unmarried officers. The Regulation for the diminution of human resources of the empire established the dismissal of civil servants in the event of marriage. This property was then synonymous with virginity. This later time announcement machine was quickly nicknamed " Iron Maiden ". In Berlin, the time announcement got its own name, it was called the Miss A 0 after the call number used there.
The birth of the " Iron Maiden ", which was first used experimentally in the remote office hit Berlin, 1935. Was developed by Siemens & Halske A. G. Nürnberg and is a good example of a mechanical automation without the now common computer technology. Even in the early days there were 84,000 calls. The imperial post it decided to auto announce the time on the phone number 03 in Hamburg. You redeemed from 4 November 1937, the " Lady of the office" of the speaking clock service. On this machine, 24 hours and 60 minutes announcements announcements were similarly recorded in different tracks like its French counterpart. At the announcement of seconds but was waived. In the final 3 seconds minute before full a buzzer was turned on, which represented the completion of the minutes.
In the 1960s, the Iron Maiden was replaced by magnetic tape devices. It was only in the 70s was with magnetic disk systems that have been sampled by several tonearms, a very reliable automatic time announcement possible.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, the time announcement had the number 119 and was with 600,000 calls daily the most dialed telephone number in Germany. They gave the then telecom operators German Federal Post Office revenue of about 50 million German marks annually. By 2005, the time announcement could be reached at the phone number 01191.
In the GDR, the speaking clock by dialing 019 was reached. The announcement gave way here from that of the Federal Republic of Germany. The current time was repeated regularly until the beep. The scheme was thus more like this:
Current status of the speaking clock
After the closure of the number range 011xxx by the Federal Network Agency, the service was switched to the 0180 4.1001 million. The tariff for the selection is out of most telephone networks 0.20 EUR per call.
For example, welcomed 12 July 2012 a female voice the caller with the following announcement:
Every ten seconds, a female computer voice repeats the current time in the following form:
After completion of the second minute conversation with the sentence " Telekom Germany thanks you for your call " automatically terminated.
Under the hamburger phone number ( 040) 42 89 90 still produces a time announcement at the regular landline rate. There is dispensed with a greeting and is repeated every ten seconds by a female voice computer time. The announcement follows the following scheme:
About the Video Text Reading Service of the Bavarian Blind and Visually Impaired Association ( 089) 559 882 88 is also the time available.
Austria
The time announcement in Austria since May 2009, 0810 00 1503 reached until then, only in 1503, decades ago but under 15 Every 10 seconds, a female voice that says, for example, to repeatedly clock 18:19:11:
The individual words were aufgesprochen 1974 by Renate Fuczik. The time signal was coupled in Austria with the atomic clock of the BEV.
With higher demands - eg for milliseconds ( 0.001 s ) or better - it was in the larger cities a second phone number, in Vienna 1505 Here are listening to continuous seconds points ( toneless, short crackling ) -. Which can also be electronically precise tapped - and with good stopwatches already acoustically allow an accuracy of 0.002 seconds. As minutes identifier eliminates the second 59, the hour accounts for the points 55-59 seconds.
The original plan was to set both services to 12 May 2009. On 27 May 2009 the speaking clock was 1503 changed to the new number 0810 001503 and with the voice of a radio presenter Angelika long. Today, the time signal, according to the Telekom Austria from the German time signal transmitter in Mainflingen near Frankfurt (Main) is based, that of the atomic clocks at the Physikalisch -Technische Bundesanstalt ( PTB) in Braunschweig is fed.
Switzerland
The telephone speaking clock can be reached at the number 161.
Time signal transmitter
Even higher accuracies are possible with the time signal services via special radio station, but then also have to take into account the signal propagation time from sender to receiver (about 0.001 s per 300 km distance).
Also by the central atomic clock many places a normal frequency available (usually 440 or 1000 Hz).
Also provide satellite navigation systems (eg GPS), a highly accurate time.