QUOTE: For 66 years, its sonorous voice has provided certainty at times of doubt, but in 165 days, at the third stroke after midnight on October 1, Australia's 'talking clock' will fall silent.

After September 30, Australians will no longer be able to dial 1194 to find out the exact time.

No longer will that striking, somewhat ominous, voice intone: "at the third stroke, it will be... 10.27 and 50 seconds" before the familiar "pip, pip, pip".

I heard this on the radio this morning. I still recall the article in Electronics Australia back in the 1990s when the then Telecom replaced the original talking clock (working from a combo of three optical discs) with a digital one, which is most likely the one still in use.

In the news report on the radio it mentioned that the service still receives around 2 million calls per annum, which makes me wonder why Telstra is in a hurry to ditch it. In the overall scheme of things, it wouldn't be a costly service to provide and the call ain't free.

I suppose they just deem it an anachronism like public phones and they just want to get shot of it all.

The history of the device and Telstra's stated reasons are covered in the SMH story link I posted.

Given that there are processing delays in most communications these days, when the talking clock goes what will be the next best way to find out the time to the exact second?

I sync all my computers and servers to ntp0.cs.mu.oz.au and ntp1.cs.mu.oz.au. That said, most, if not all, Internet time servers are still not in step with GMT +/- x hrs. The default one in Windows, time.windows.com, is also not in step. Big Ben is being refurbished at the moment so you can't even call a Pom and get them to read the time from there.

I wonder if Informatel will put the system up for sale and if any one or group will purchase it.

If that happened the new owner would want to make money from it. If that happened, you can expect the number to change from 1194 to 1900 XXX XXX.

I was thinking more of collectors/museums than operators.

I could fit it in my workshop, for the right price.

A long delayed comment here, but on the last day of the Talking Clock, I got out my t*pe r*corder and r*corded some samples. (I'm being careful in case the Postmaster-General decides to come looking for me.)

(I'm being careful in case the Postmaster-General decides to come looking for me.)

The last Postmaster-General was Peter Nixon (1975). He is now aged 94. I think you're safe.