TALKING CLOCK

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 June 1937, Page 14

TALKING CLOCK

AUCKLAND INVENTION

To know the correct time is important to everybody. A time service was given over the telephone in 1930 and the number of time calls recorded was approximately 30,000,000 a. year. In the Auckland exchange eight girls were employed to give the time to callers, but the service was discontinued as an economy measure (says “The Star”). Ever since the telephone time service ended, Mr. R. Brennan, of Auckland, a Scottish engineer, who has had a wide experience with talkie and movie equipment, has been working on a talking clock which can be used in telephone exchanges or radio stations to record the time minute by minute.

This has now been perfected and patients have been granted in the principal countries of the world. It is an ingenious contrivance and represents much hard work and thought. It is the third machine Mr. Brennan has made. The others were "scrapped." as they did not measure up to the inventor's conception of the ideal.'

The talking clock is a. mechanical and electrical device for telling the time, combining electrical reproduction of .sound from photographic recordings, and a master electric clock, the two working in harmony, and giving audible and accurate statements of the time throughout the day and. night.

AI ’TOMATIC SERVICE If the invention is taken up by the New Zealand Post and Telegraph Department. all that the user of a telephone will have to do if he wishes to know the time is to dial a certain number and he will be automatically connected to the talking clock. This keeps on announcing the time thus: “I am the New Zealand talking clock. The time is now — o'clock." Although the clock is now “geared" for announcements of each minute, it can be so manipulated that it gives re-

cordings every ten seconds. In construction the talking clock embodies an electric motor driving two spheres which are in constant revolution when the clock is working. One sphere is divided Into two parts, one portion of which is subdivided into 60 spaces, each representing one minute. The other portion is divided into twelve spaces, each representing an ' hour. Photographic recordings of the num- ■ hers one to 59 and the hour are attached to the minute portion, and numbers one to 12 in the hour section. A surrounding strip carries a recording on which is photographed, "The time is now.” A beam of light, one-half of one-thousandth of an inch in length, is focused on the recording, the variations of light caused by the modulation of the beam being superimposed upon a photo-electric cell and converted into sound in similar fashion to a cinematographic sound film. This sphere is kept in time by a master electric clock which so disposes the recordings in front of the beam that it gives a statement such as “The time is now 10.45.” The second sphere has nothing to do with the time, but can be employed in giving short announcements such as weather forecasts. In various countries announcers in the telephone exchanges give the time to inquirers. At the peak period of the day the New York Post Office answers 70,000 time calls an hour. The British Post Office installed a talkie clock six months ago and has recorded 6,000,000 calls for which subscribers pay one penny a call. Thus in six months the revenue would amount to £25,000. Six photo-electric cells are used in the British clock compared with one in the Auckland machine.