the speaking clock bows out

This is a service that younger people will never know about. 3699, the speaking clock subscriber number. “I found it amusing, then it allowed to know the time”, says a passerby. The time was thus at the end of the line. It was in 1933 that a French physicist invented this legendary service. For more than 20 years, Orange had resumed its operation, but faced with the drop in the number of calls, the operator was forced to remove it.

It’s the end of an era. “There is a drop in calls, which is growing every year, since we now have access to the time on our tablets, our mobiles, our computers and therefore less and less use of this service “, says Catherine Breton, marketing manager at Orange. To synchronize your watches, the Paris Observatory broadcasts legal time on the web.