The speaking clock could survive through open source


Orange has announced the end of the speaking clock for this summer. But, faced with the mobilization of certain Internet users attached to the service and the preservation of French technological heritage, the 3699 could survive through open source.

It’s a service that people under twenty probably haven’t heard of, and even less used: the speaking clock. In operation for almost 90 years, the device that allows you to tell the time by calling a telephone number will end very soon in France. It has been decided May 4, 2022 to put an end to it as of July 1. The “3699” is therefore living its last weeks.

Really ? In fact, not quite. If it is true that the service as it is operated today will come to an end in barely two months, as Orange has indicated, it could well be reborn in another form. In any case, it is the wish ofa movement that emerged these last hours on social networks, with the wish to save the 3699.

Obtaining the exact time by 3699 has accompanied several generations of French women and men. Today, the service has fallen into disuse. // Source: Jeshoots.com

We must save the soldier 3699

And precisely, this prospect is in the process of becoming a reality. As Pierre Beyssac, the founder of the Gandi registration office, pointed out on May 6, a favorable contact was established with the incumbent operator to save the speaking clock. More precisely, it is a question of avoiding breakage by entrusting the device to others, with a view, for example, to extracting the data from it.

I got some feedback from people at Orange. The machine will a priori not end up at the scrap dealer, preservation planned, and the extraction of the content, in particular audio (digital electronics from the 90s) is quite possible. », he says in a tweet. What it will be possible to draw from this conservation remains to be clarified, just like the uses which could then emerge from it.

The day before, Pierre Beyssac threw a lead to the attention of Orange : distribute audio files in open data. This would allow third parties to recover the sounds to adapt the tool to more recent technologies, in order to offer it in a web version, or otherwise. However, there is the question, unresolved for the moment, of the rights to use the sound files.

This beautiful story of preservation of the French technical heritage, however, has a certain somewhat amusing paradox. Indeed, one cannot help thinking that the rescue of the speaking clock will lead to a service intended for the general public, which will necessarily be accessible on platforms which are already equipped with everything necessary to… tell the time !

Clearly, if this future 3699 is accessible via the web or in application, one could retort: ​​if you need to read the time, look at your mobile screen or the PC taskbar! The 3699 made sense when computers didn’t exist and telephones didn’t have a screen, but a dial for dialing.

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On period telephones, without a screen and without an Internet connection, a service like 3699 made sense. // Source: Craig Allen

It is also for this reason that the speaking clock is about to be retired: the use of the 3699 has crumbled in recent years, precisely because there are now several ways to to know the time: computers and smartphones and, for those less technologically equipped, TV and radio also make it possible to know the time.

It is difficult for the 3699 to resist the proliferation of channels available to obtain the time. Especially since these other channels are free, where communication with the speaking clock is charged 1.50 euro plus the price of the call. Under these conditions, the drop in calls to 3699 was inexorable. Just like his reference to the history books.





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