As well as the speaking clocks, there was ancillary equipment to provide timing signals, 1 pulse per second, 8 pulses per minute and 8 pulses per hour The Time and Frequency Standards Section in the PMG Research Laboratories at 59 Little Collins Street, Melbourne maintained the frequency checks to ensure that the system was "on time" From a maintenance point of view, the most important part of the mechanical clocks was to ensure that they were well oiled to minimise wear on the cams and to replace blown globes in the optical pickups from the glass disk recordings When Time and Frequency Standards moved from 59 Collins Street to Clayton, the control signals were duplicated and a second bank of Caesium Beam Primary standards installed so the cutover was transparent with no loss of service. Assmann digital speaking clock at the Victorian Telecommunications Museum This mechanical system was replaced with a digital system in 1990 Each speaking clock ensemble consisted of two announcing units (Zag 500), a supervisory unit (CCU 500), two phase-locked oscillators, two pulse distribution units, a Civil Time Receiver, (plus a spare) and two or four Computime 1200 baud modems The voice was provided by Richard Peach, a former ABC broadcaster The various components were sent for commercial production after a working prototype was built in the Telstra Research Laboratory (TRL) Assmann Australia used a German announcing unit and built a supervisory unit to TRL specifications Design 2000 incorporated TRL oscillators in the phase locked oscillator units designed at TRL and controlled by two tone from the Telstra Caesium beam frequency standards Ged Company built civil time receivers The civil time code generators and two tone generators were designed and built within TRL. Each state capital had a digital speaking clock for the local time of day with one access number Australia wide, 1194 In 2002 the Telstra 1194 service was migrated to Informatel (who use their own digital technology, in conjunction with the National Measurement Institute — but kept the original voice of Richard Peach), whilst the other time services (e.g hourly pips to radio stations) was retained as a service by Telstra In May 2006 the remaining Telstra services were withdrawn and the digital hardware was decommissioned The 1194 service, though no longer provided by Telstra, is still operated by Informatel in partnership with Telstra as of January, 2010. In Austria, the speaking clock ("Zeitansage", which literally means "time announcement") can be reached at 0810 00 1503 A recorded female voice says (for instance): "Es wird mit dem Summerton 15 Uhr, 53 Minuten und 10 Sekunden", meaning "At the buzzing tone, the time will be 15 hours, 53 minutes and 10 seconds", followed by a short pause and a 1 kHz, 0.25 seconds long beep (even though the announcement "buzzing tone" suggests otherwise)
