![\"Speaking](\"\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/time-of-day-opporator-340x268.jpg)
<\/p>\nThe service has a long and storied history and even today in the age of near ubiquitous smartphones and the internet it\u2019s still called an astounding thirty million times per year.<\/p>\n
Prior to the introduction of the UK speaking clock service in 1936, it\u2019s noted that people wanting to know the time who didn\u2019t have a clock or watch handy would simply call the exchange operator and ask, resulting in operators spending much of their time doing this, instead of routing calls.<\/p>\n
With exchange operators being inundated with calls from people just wanting to know the time, it was evident from almost the moment telephones were first introduced and made available to the British public in the last years of the 19th century that an automated speaking clock system was needed.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the technology to record human voices wasn\u2019t widely commercially available until around the mid-1920s. Even then, it would take until the mid-1930s for the Post Office, who controlled the telephone system in the UK at the time, to begin designing a machine that would accurately tell you the time audibly.<\/p>\n
The speaking clock machine eventually constructed by the Post Office was relatively large and contained \u201cstate of the art\u201d technology including using several electric motors, glass discs, various valves, and photocells. This system was evidently good enough that the service wasn\u2019t upgraded until 1963, nearly three decades after it was originally introduced.<\/p>\n
![\"ethel\"](\"\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/ethel-340x191.jpg)
Ethel Cain and the Speaking Clock Machine<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
With the system designed, a voice was needed.\u00a0 As such the Post Office held a competition to \u201cthe girl with the golden voice\u201d. No men were considered for the role as the telephone orientated jobs were still seen as a strictly female gendered profession back then.\u00a0 The winner of the contest would not only become the voice of the speaking clock, but also be given a prize of 10 guineas or about \u00a3700 today, a somewhat paltry sum given the billions (after adjusting for inflation) the service has earned in the ensuing decades since its genesis.<\/p>\n
The woman chosen for the gig was one Ethel Jane Cain, a telephonist.<\/p>\n
Of course lots has changed since then and things has become a little more modern, but I will leave yourselfs to do some of your own research if you want to know more.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Reference:http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2016\/07\/uk-speaking-clock\/<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Time to find out about the speaking clock The service has a long and storied history and even today in the age of near ubiquitous smartphones and the internet it\u2019s still called an astounding thirty million times per year. Prior to the introduction of the UK speaking clock service in 1936, it\u2019s noted that people wanting to know the time who didn\u2019t have a clock or watch handy would simply call the exchange operator and ask, resulting in operators spending much of their time doing this, instead of routing calls. With exchange operators being inundated with calls from people just <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting-facts","tag-facts","has_thumb"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypuzzles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypuzzles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypuzzles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypuzzles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypuzzles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypuzzles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":395,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypuzzles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions\/395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypuzzles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypuzzles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypuzzles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypuzzles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}