Friday, January 18, 2019

You can call TIM and he's Scottish

Can one still phone TIM I wonder?

Discussing time with friend, Vivien, over our hazelnut ice cream baskets in Verdi's earlier today we decided a computer timepiece could be reliable or not depending on its programming.

Every clock in our house is different. If it were only two or three minutes it would be okay but the variation is more like twenty minutes, which really isn't okay if I have to be somewhere. hence the question about TIM.

For non-Brit readers TIM was the talking clock: at the third stroke the time will be ...


Yes, you can! And today's TIM has a lovely Scottish accent. And it turns out that both the computer clock and my watch are right, although admittedly my watch was definitely five minutes slow when I arrived at school to pick up GrandDaughter2 the other day. (Fortunately I'm always to pick her up so I wasn't that late.)

2 comments:

SmitoniusAndSonata said...

I'm sure that we used to be able to simply pick up the phone and ask the local operator. The Speaking Clock was only used if you needed to know to the second the 'Correct' time.

Liz Hinds said...

We didn't have a phone until the 1970s and I don't remember there being an operator, but I'm sure you're right, Sonata.