The Time Lady

 By Bruce Shawkey

I am of a generation that remembers calling a number on a landline to receive the correct time. It is almost inconceivable today, given that we have smart watches, cell phones, and personal computers.

I remember our family had a rotary dial wall phone, and a printed list of commonly dialed phone numbers taped to the wall next to the phone. One of those numbers was the time lady. Of course, there was no actual lady, just a lady's voice.

When you dialed the number, you would hear a short commercial message, followed by:

"At the tone, the time will be 8:42 and 30 seconds... beep."

There was also another number you could dial that would also give the current temperature, but I do not recall that we (myself and family) had that number.

Most telephone companies discontinued their time-and-temperature lines during the 1990s and 2000s. A few survived as local curiosities for a while, often sponsored by banks or businesses.

On a related note, it was not uncommon to memorize a number of telephone numbers for friends and relatives. That practice is also unheard of today with the widespread use of smart phones that store contact information that can be accessed with a few buttons or even activated by voice.