One more birthday to add and it's quintessentially Canadian. 

The beginning of the long dash: Happy 80th anniversary to CBC Radio's longest running segment

That time signal goes back to 1939, part of the war effort to coordinate operations to an exact second. If you listen to the interview (featuring the actual announcer who currently voices the top of the hour feature) you'll hear him talk about how they had to upgrade the technology over the years.

When new computer software came in, that long pause before the final 'dash' registered in the system as dead air, firing off all kinds of emergency measures in CBC master control. They were forced to make changes to the way it was done to fix that problem, including preventing unwanted emergency filler from firing off to cover what wasn't actually an error at all.

He also reveals he frequently gets recognized by some when he speaks simply because of that very brief once-a-day announcement. Most often he says, it's cab drivers who listen to a lot of radio and realize they've heard that voice somewhere whenever he gets into a taxi.

KX 96 was once CHOO Country radio 14 AM in Ajax ON founded in 1967 a retrospective can be found here http://www.vcn.bc.ca/~jrp/