bcla
On our rugged Eastern foothills.....
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2012
Where we live it is still operated by AT&T. DH works for them and he always jokes his Grandma is the only one that probably still is keeping that line in usage as they probably think it's a lot of people. That's not his division and I told him to look up who does that area and call them to see exactly how many people use it. But I guess just a machine that goes off their server time so no real loss of money other then the telephone number they own. However, it's not the popcorn number it is something else so that's probably how it slid by AT&T and is still in their system as not mass eliminated when they got rid of it 10+ years ago.
She doesn't pay extra for this number. Back years ago when we'd be charged a few cents for a local call, she'd pay it
There's nothing preventing anyone from setting up a phone number to dial in and produce sounds. I remember there used to be people setting up joke versions of time recordings, including one whose schtick was "At the moan, the time will be.....".
The US Naval Observatory still has the time at 202-762-1069 from DC, and 719-567-6742 from Colorado Springs.
https://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/time/telephone-time
However, the person who recorded it for the Bell System was Jane Barbe. She did any number of different recordings that were used by AT&T and its local Bell System subsidiaries. She grew up in Georgia and had a natural southern accent, but she recorded different versions that varied the accent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Barbe
Apparently there were tons of variations that she had recorded. This one says "The time from your telephone company is....":