NRC time is referred to its primary cesium atomic clocks designed, built, and maintained at the NRC time standards laboratory in Ottawa.
The NRC provides a speaking clock service; voice announcements of Eastern Time are made every 10 seconds, followed by a tone indicating the exact time
This service is available to the general public by dialing (613) 745-1576 for English service and (613) 745-9426 for French service
Long-distance charges apply for those calling from outside the Ottawa/Gatineau area.
The English message, from an older male voice, is in the following format, repeated every ten seconds: "NRC, Eastern (Standard/Daylight) Time, x hours, x minutes, and x seconds." This is followed by a single 800 Hz beep
The word "exactly" replaces "and x seconds" at the top of the minute
Additionally, there is an 800 Hz "tick" every second in the background.
NRC also provides shortwave radio clock time signal broadcasts, on specific frequencies (CHU on 3330 kHz, 7850 kHz and 14670 kHz) as well as on the English (CBC Radio) and French (Radio-Canada) radio networks of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation once per day; the former at 13:00 (1:00pm) and the latter at 12:00 (noon) Eastern Time.
The NRC also supports Network Time Protocol (NTP) as well as a web-based clock service.
More details are available on the NRC web site
In Finland the speaking clock service is known as Neiti Aika in Finnish or Fröken Tid in Swedish, both of which literally translate as 'Miss Time'
The first Neiti Aika service was started in 1936 and was the first automated phone service in Finland
The service is provided by regional phone companies and can be reached by dialling 10061 in the whole country
The voice of the speaking clock can be male or female depending on whose phone company service you are using
Nowadays the use of the Neiti Aika service has decreased pretty much to null and the press officer of Auria, the regional phone company of Turku, stated in an article of the Turun Sanomat newspaper that when the company started the service in 1938 it was used 352,310 times in its starting year compared to 1300 times in September 2006.
In France, the speaking clock (horloge parlante) has been in service since 14 February 1933
It is available on 36.99 from within France, or +33 8.36.99.xx.xx from other countries (where x can be anything).
Higher phone rates apply when dialing numbers with the code '8' in France (from within the country or from abroad)
Just the normal fixed line phone rate applies.
The Icelandic speaking clock service ("klukkan"), provided by Síminn, can be reached by dialing (+354) 155.