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A talking clock (also known as a "speaking clock" or "auditory clock") is a timekeeping device that presents the time as sounds. It may present the time solely as sounds, such as a phone-based time service or a clock for the hearing impaired, or may have a sound feature in addition to an analog or digital face.

History
Although they would not be considered to be speaking, clocks have incorporated noisemakers such as clangs, chimes, gongs, melodies, and the sounds of cuckoos or roosters from almost the beginning of the mechanical clock era. Soon after Thomas Edison's invention of the phonograph, the earliest attempts to make a clock that incorporated a voice were made. Around 1878, Frank Lambert invented a machine that used a voice recorded on a lead cylinder to call out the hours. Lambert used lead in place of Edison's soft tinfoil, and as a result, this is the oldest known sound recording that is still playable, and was recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records as such in 1992. It is currently on display at the National Watch and Clock Museum in Columbia, Pennsylvania.

Although there are rumors that other talking clocks may have been produced afterward, it is not until around 1910 that another talking clock was introduced, when Bernhard Hiller created a clock that used a belt with a recording on it to announce the time. However, these belts were often broken by the hand-tightening required, and all attempts to reproduce the celluloid ribbon have so far failed.

Over twenty years later, the first practical use of talking clocks was seen when Ernest Esclangon created a talking telephone time service in Paris, France. On its first day, February 14, 1933, over 140,000 calls were received. London began a similar service three years later. This type of talking time service is still around, and over one million calls per year are received for the NIST's Telephone Time-of-Day Service.

In 1954, Ted Duncan Inc. released the "Hickory Dickory Clock", a crank toy intended for children. This clock used a record, needle, and tone arm to produce its sound.

In 1968, the first truly portable talking clock, the "Mattel-a-Time Talking Clock" was released.

In 1984, the Hattori Seiko Co. released the world's first quartz-based talking clock, the Pyramid Talk.

Current talking clocks often include many more features than just giving the time; in these, the ability to speak the time is part of a wide range of voice capabilities, such as reading the weather or other information to the user.

Teaching timetelling
After the telephone time service, the next practical application of the talking clock was in the teaching of timetelling to children. The first talking clock to be used for this purpose was the Mattel "Mattel-a-Time Talking Clock" of 1968. Several other clocks of this type followed, including one featuring Thomas the Tank Engine. One of the latest ones, the "Talking Clever Clock", includes a quiz button which asks questions such as "What time is it?", "What time will it be in an hour?", and "How much time has passed between 1:00 and 2:30?" Other educational talking clocks come in a kit designed to be assembled by children.

Talking clocks can also be used with children whose learning disabilities may be partially offset by the reinforcement provided by hearing the time as well as seeing it.

Assisting the impaired
Talking clocks have found a natural home as an assistive technology for the visually impaired. There are over 150 tabletop clocks and 50 types of watches which include an auditory function. However, their aid is somewhat limited, as most of them tend to announce the time only at the top of the hour or the press of a button. Nevertheless, to press the button, one must be able to find the clock. To address these limitations, one manufacturer produced a clock that would announce the time upon detecting a user's whistling signal, but it is no longer manufactured. Time speaking functions are now integrated into many other more generalized assistance technologies for the visually impaired.

Branding/Advertising
Many companies have used talking clocks as a novelty item to promote their brand. In 1987, the H. J. Heinz Company released a clock with the figure of "Mr. Aristocrat", a tomato with a motif similar to Mr. Peanut. At alarm time, the clock said, "It's time to get up; get up right away! Wait any longer and it's 'ketchup' all day! Remember, Heinz is the thick rich one." At roughly the same time, Pillsbury created a similar clock with the character of Little Sprout. In recent years, the Coca-Cola polar bear, the Red and Yellow M&M's characters, the Pillsbury Doughboy, a Campbell's Soup girl, and others have at one time appeared on a talking clock. One of the more interesting branded clocks was produced by Energizer and was a soft, battery-shaped clock whose alarm was turned off by punching it or throwing it against a hard surface.

Entertainment/conversation pieces
The inexpensiveness of modern speech technology has allowed manufacturers to include talking clock capabilities into a wide range of products. Many of these are intended as conversation pieces or speak merely for the entertainment of hearing sounds or words spoken by an inanimate object. Such timepieces include Darth Vader clocks, calculators with time features, and even a painting of DaVinci's The Last Supper that announces the time on the hour along with a quote from Jesus.

Other themes of talking timepieces include fortune-telling, astrology, clocks with moving lips, animated creatures, sports and athletes, and movies, among others.

Technology
Most modern talking clocks are based on speech-synthesis integrated circuits that generate speech from sampled, stored data. The rapid technological progress of the 1980s enabled today's high-quality talking products. Early talking clocks employed chips that linked phonemes to generate speech. These products could generate unlimited speech, but it was of relatively poor quality that sounded robotic, at worst, unintelligible. Today's higher-quality speech is produced by sampled-data systems that take elements of an actual human voice. Modern voice synthesis technologies can produce synthesized vocabularies that retain the style of the speaker exactly and are not limited to just perfect English, but can be as varied as Scottish accents, Japanese, and even the voice of a young child. Such voices are all captured well using tiny, inexpensive voice chips that are readily available.

Almost all of the latest voice-chipped talking clocks incorporate the female human voice to announce the time. Dr. Mark McKinley, the president of the International Society of Talking Clock Collectors, proposes three possible explanations for this phenomenon. The female voice may be considered more soothing psychologically; it may be a relic of the female voice being historically associated with secretarial (Administrative Assistant) functions; or a feminine voice may possibly simply be softer in a less intrusive way.

Many talking clocks include a light sensor or a setting that will automatically silence them between certain hours (usually between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.).

Many talking clocks of the 1970s utilized an Ozen box, which is a mechanism similar to a phonograph, in which a needle-like stylus tracks on a 2.25 inch platter similar to a vinyl phonograph record. The Janex Corporation produced most of the clocks which use this device, and they are highly-prized among collectors.

Children-Friendly Clocks
Many parents buy talking clocks to teach children time, or wake children up. Of course, children need a clock that is actually "fun". So, companies incorporated famous fictional characters onto these clocks, to make them fun for children. Children enjoy clocks with characters like:


 * Mickey Mouse
 * Barbie and Ken
 * Several Looney Tunes characters (including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety Bird, et al.)
 * The Simpsons
 * Strawberry Shortcake
 * Superheroes (including Superman, Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, et al.)
 * Furby
 * Biz Markie
 * The Smurfs
 * SpongeBob SquarePants
 * Mario

As well as many others. Some people buy these clocks not to tell time, but because some are really humorous or cute.

Other "Kids Clocks" Have prayers, kid-friendly spiritual messages ("God Made You Unique!"), or just really cute children. But kids seem to like the "Cartoon" people clocks best.