As someone who grew up in Northern California, I learned that in order to find out what the current time was, I needed to dial 767-2676 (which spells POPCORN). In fact, to this day, I still dial 408-767-2676 when I want to know what time it is. I was also irritated that such a service didn't exist anywhere else.

Turns out there's a reason for it. Telecoms in every other state have discontinued their time service. AT&T in California and Nevada were the lone holdouts in providing that service. However, on September 19th, AT&T will be decommissioning the POPCORN machine. The current incarnation of the machine was designed in the 1960s and has certainly lived a long, useful life. The machine looked something like this Audichron pictured, I'm sure.

I feel sorry for the poor person who ends up getting POPCORN as their 7-digit number when they start reassigning the 767 prefix. There's no reason AT&T couldn't keep that number around for old time sake and put a different machine there. Meanwhile, if you still need a speaking clock, check out the speaking clock entry in Wikipedia.

(Picture courtesy of Telephone Collectors International)