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Radio News: The time of day is still available on telephone, shortwave
Anyone who needs to know what time it is, and does not have a clock, or a watch, or any sort of computer, can still find out. The U.S. Naval Observatory still maintains a phone number, 202-762-1401, where anyone can call and hear the exact time. The Navy has several other time numbers, some just for modems. And Jock Elliott reports in the SWLing Blog that there are several shortwave radio stations also set up with only the time of day, repeating endlessly, as content. "The National Institute of Standards and Technology (part of the U.S. Department of Commerce) maintains a couple of stations devoted to broadcasting time announcements, standard time intervals, standard frequencies, UT1 time corrections, a BCD time code, and geophysical alerts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week," Elliott writes. WWV in Fort Collins, Colorado, is one station, radiating 10,000 watts on 5 MHz, 10 MHz, and 15 MHz; and 2500 watts on 2.5 MHz and 20 MHz. WWVH, based in Kekaha, Hawaii, transmits 10,000 watts on 10 MHz and 15 MHz, and 5000 watts on 2.5 MHz. "WWV uses a male voice; WWVH, a female voice. They are staggered in time so that they don’t talk over each other. While doing research for this blog, one afternoon on 5 MHz and 10 MHz, I could hear the female voice, followed by the male voice, so I was hearing both Hawaii and Colorado," Elliott writes. There is also a Canadian time station, CHU, transmitting 3000 watts on 3.33 and 14.67 MHz, and a 5000 watts on 7.85 MHz in English and French from Barrhaven, Ontario. And there is also a time station beaming from Moscow, Russia that transmits on 9996 and 14996 kHz. Read more about this story at the SWLing Post..