[time-nuts] Talking Clock

[John Reid]

> I believe an original talking clock is being maintained in the 
> Telecommunications Museum in Hawthorn (Australia). Third floor, 
> Hawthorn Telephone Exchange.
>
>
> John
>
>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2019 02:58:45 -0700
>> From: "D. Resor" <organlists1 at sonic.net>
>> To: "'Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement'"
>>     <time-nuts at lists.febo.com>
>> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Talking Clock
>> Message-ID:
>>     <!&!AAAAAAAAAAAYAAAAAAAAABO5wTM7/NRDgk/3nPo+uv7CgAAAEAAAAIAHIJorXzVNr10Vuz41+rcBAAAAAA==@sonic.net> 
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>>
>> Content-Type: text/plain;    charset="us-ascii"
>>
>> I believe this is the glass plate MkII Talking Clock which referred 
>> to in
>> AUS.  It was retired in 1990.  Also shown is the digital replacement 
>> system.
>>
>> Progress is great, but in some ways it's also kind of sad.
>>
>> The speaking Clock pt1, Talking Clock
>> https://youtu.be/fp4zlMZVcmM
>>
>> The Speaking Clock pt 2, Talking clock
>> https://youtu.be/9LVzKHOodC4
>>
>>
>> Donald Resor
>> N6KAW
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: time-nuts <time-nuts-bounces at lists.febo.com> On Behalf Of
>> vilgotch1 at gmail.com
>> Sent: Monday, September 30, 2019 9:50 PM
>> To: time-nuts at lists.febo.com
>> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Talking Clock
>>
>> The electro-mechanical-optical clock was made obsolete years ago and the
>> voice is now generated electronically. I think the reason it's being 
>> closed
>> down is that the PSTN is digital and so delays are unpredictable 
>> leading to
>> possible errors in the time. According to a news item I saw the 
>> company that
>> runs the clock and supplies the audio wants to keep it going but the
>> national network supplier (Telstra) is determined to close it down 
>> because
>> of "network incompatibility".
>>
>> I made a talking clock with that format a few years ago. It is based 
>> on an
>> AVR processor that uses the mains frequency as a reference. The voice is
>> generated by an ancient speech synthesizer chip that sounds like Stephen
>> Hawking and the time is simultaneously displayed on a VFD. A PIR 
>> detector
>> switches off the outputs when there's no human around. It can be seen at
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmg0YsHlB3g&t=3s
>>
>> It wouldn't be hard to use the same platform to translate the time 
>> from a
>> GPS receiver into the spoken and visual word.
>>
>> Morris
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2019 08:00:25 +1000
>> From: Neville Michie <namichie at gmail.com>
>> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
>>     <time-nuts at lists.febo.com>
>> Cc: Neville Michie <namichie at gmail.com>
>> Subject: [time-nuts] Talking Clock
>>
>>
>> Here in Australia we are suffering the loss of one of the significant
>> developments in accurate time keeping and dissemination.
>> The talking clock, built in England, with sound tracks on rotating glass
>> disks, has been on the Australian telephone system for more than half a
>> century.
>> The system was timed by quartz oscillators, synchronised to the local
>> observatory time.
>> Now in spite of the trivial cost of maintaining the system it has been
>> removed by the money-hungry telco which took over the government run
>> telephone system.
>> Now it occurs to me that the sound tracks occupy a very small digital 
>> space,
>> and with modern flash drives and a little logic the talking clock 
>> could be
>> driven by any time nut's disciplined time source.
>> So is there a time nut who could design a voice output that we could all
>> use?
>>
>> ?At the third stroke the time will be??
>>
>> cheers,
>> Neville Michie
>>