Audichron Company

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Audichron Company was a company founded in the 1930s by John Franklin in Atlanta, Georgia to produce the Audichron, a talking clock. By the 1970s, there were thousands of Audichron time-of-day announcers in use all over the world. Audichron had also developed a machine to announce the temperature. During the 1970s and 1980s, Audichron began to manufacture other kinds of equipment besides time and temperature machines.

The Audichron sales force found sponsors such as banks for its time and temperature machines in a city. Once a sponsor had been obtained, Audichron would lease the machines to the local phone company. An Audichron field service engineer would then visit the telephone company and help install the Audicrhorn equipment in the central office. The phone company would then hook up incoming trunks to the Audichron equipment and would bill the final customer (the bank) each month for the trunks and the Audichron equipment. Audichron received payments from the telephone company.

Audichron hired "talent" to come into their recording studio to make recordings. Customers had a choice of whether they wanted a male voice or a female voice on their announcements. During the 1950s, a lady named Mary Moore did the female voice. During the 1970s, Jane Barbe did the female voice and John Doyle did the male voice.

[edit] US Patents

4,791,666 Automatic intercept system interface for electromechanical telephone central office

4,446,337 Method and apparatus for revertive automatic intercept message delivery in a telephone system

4,406,925 Message delivery system

4,389,546 Digital announcement system including remote loading and interrogation

4,005,491 Dampened transducer support apparatus for message announcing system

3,974,338 Apparatus for automatic message reprogramming of a message announcement system