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"Why didn't you tell us you had a time machine!?" - Rat Ramblings — LiveJournal [entries|archive|friends|userinfo]
Nicodemus

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"Why didn't you tell us you had a time machine!?" [Aug. 29th, 2007|10:29 am]
Nicodemus
Sadly, it's the end of time, at least as far as phone services. California and Nevada still have automated time services but the old machines are wearing out and won't be replaced.

I have to admit, I haven't needed to call POPCORN since back when I was a teenager. (And I didn't realize that POPCORN was a California-specific thing, either.) Nowadays, I'm so surrounded by battery-backed time-telling electronics that I don't even bother to wear a watch. Still, it's the end of a piece of communications nostalgia.

"At the sound of the beep, the time is unknown."
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Comments:
[User Picture]From: tilton
2007-08-29 05:40 pm (UTC)
Sad, sad indeed.

When I was in college, I was friends with a phreaker in Perth, Australia. He once routed the Perth time service to my answering machine. I came home to a tape full of "Good Morning. At the tone, the time will be .... *beep!*" spoken in a lovely posh Aussie accent.

Good times.
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[User Picture]From: mammallamadevil
2007-08-29 05:46 pm (UTC)

I was just going to make an entry on this!..(grin)

I grew up with both POPCORN and 853-1212---once you went into GTE territory (roughly the San Luis Obispo/Santa Barbara County line) the number changed...

it is something that I always took for granted...and thought it was the same in other states---HAH!

MLD

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[User Picture]From: ankhorite
2007-08-29 06:08 pm (UTC)

Calling Time

I don't remember the number for Time in Illinois, but it wasn't POPCORN.

We had a nice reverse-directory service, 312-976-something, but I've forgotten...

The big gig in DC has been to call the Lunch Lady, formerly of the USGS and now recording for a hospital in California, even though she works as a wheelchair pusher at Dulles.

I hate the wheelchair service at Dulles but I've never had her. Most of the pushers are extremely small, frail, and elderly, and none of the chairs have luggage racks of any kind. Gawd, I hate Dulles.

*thunk*
*thunk*
*thunk*
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[User Picture]From: wolfstoy
2007-08-29 06:10 pm (UTC)
Well damn, I use that number as my test call number. It sucks to see it go. I'll miss her voice I think.
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[User Picture]From: yagfox
2007-08-29 08:15 pm (UTC)
Ours went digital in 1984, is still going, and receives 135 million calls a year! :)

(apparently!)

There is an original machine at the London Science Museum!
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[User Picture]From: happyjenn97
2007-08-29 09:09 pm (UTC)
That's too bad... I called it for the first time just a few weeks ago!
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