Also, my local pool has 3 clocks. The spinny cross one, actual time with seconds, and another one that counts down from 60 minutes, but it’s 5 mins off from the actual time with seconds, and the + spinny clock is also off between the two of them. Drives me insane.
In Denmark we had a service called “Miss Time” (Frøken Klokken) where you could dial 155 and get the time. You could just about get the current time in a phone booth without needing to pay, which I used pretty regularly during my paper route. The service ran between 1939 and 2021, but one can still experience it digitally here which is pretty cool: https://froekenklokken.enigma.dk/
I loved how when I was a kid, the clocks weren’t in sync. They were up to 5 minutes off between them.
I hated that as a kid.
Also, my local pool has 3 clocks. The spinny cross one, actual time with seconds, and another one that counts down from 60 minutes, but it’s 5 mins off from the actual time with seconds, and the + spinny clock is also off between the two of them. Drives me insane.
In Denmark we had a service called “Miss Time” (Frøken Klokken) where you could dial 155 and get the time. You could just about get the current time in a phone booth without needing to pay, which I used pretty regularly during my paper route. The service ran between 1939 and 2021, but one can still experience it digitally here which is pretty cool: https://froekenklokken.enigma.dk/
Phone companies used to employ somebody to sit and answer those calls!
And they probably made enough to support a family of 4 with a house.
F for the now-unemployed time callers 😞
We had a similar service, you could dial POPCORN and get the time.
https://www.kqed.org/news/11853891/you-used-to-be-able-to-call-pop-corn-and-get-the-time-what-happened-to-that