[c5karl]

It's not a good idea to call 911 with non-emergencies.

But until a few decades ago, the primary way most of us to set our clocks was to call a number the phone company provided, which in our case was TI4-1212. "At the tone, the time will be ..."

[jrockway]

You can still call NIST and get the time via "at the tone...": https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/time-di...