What purpose, outside of displaying the wrong time and temperature, do these signs serve? When and why did this practice start? Is/was this a strictly bank kinda thing?
When you really stop and think about it, it’s a strange marketing concept that every bank that I know of participates in.
Until the 16th or 17th Century, clocks were bulky, hi-maintenance, and very expensive. Only the very rich could afford them. This made them a status symbol. The big clock in the town square would be maintained by the city government, the church, or the richest corporation in the town. Like the bank, for instance.
Banks tend to be very conservative, and they hold onto lots of obsolete traditions, like neckties, clocks, closing on holidays,…
Out here in Southern California, you can find the time and temperature posted at car dealerships, burger joints, and all other sorts of businesses. Banks probably do it because it’s something that a bank would do. Wouldn’t you trust your bank to know what time it is?
Why a bank? Why not a library? I don’t see any connection at all between handling money and knowing what time it is. Are you being sarcastic? 
Once upon a time, back when knights prickethed their steeds and swyfen was a national sport, folks did not have watches. Towns rarely had clocks. Although way back the Babylonians had pretty much set out minutes and hours, good old Piers Plowman was left pretty much on his own to figure out when he should be where. Sundials, graduated candles and hourglasses existed, but they were not too practical because they all required a fair bit of attention. Let’s face it, when you’re out digging a ditch, you’re not going to mess with these things. Time was centrally controlled in the community by whomever had the economic wherewithal to put effort into keeping time.
The only hitch with central control was that it was difficult to communicate the time throughout the community. Although monks had cells, they did not have cell phones. So if you wanted folks to round up and come on in, you rang the bell in you community’s church tower to broadcast the time. Of course this brings up the old chestnut of who keeps the time to the time keeper. Enter the alarm clock.
In 1335 in Milan’s Visconti’s Palace Chapel, a mechanical clock which rang each hour (no, it did not track minutes) was installed to remind the sacristan to ring the chapel bell to call the monks to vespers. This whizz-dong technology caught on so quickly that before you could say Holy Horologium, everyone who was anyone in Europe was throwing up clocks in their bell towers.
France’s Charles V put up a clock in his Palais Royal (now the Palais de Justice) in 1360, and Rouen’s clock went up in 1379. Across the Channel, the Salisbury Cathedral clock went up in 1396 (and was rebuilt in 1929), and the Wells Cathedral clock went up in 1392 (and now is in London’s Science Museum). Time was still a bit of a hazy concept (hey, they were fighting the Hundred Years’ War – their concept of time was significantly different from ours), but it was catching on, and the most powerful estates, Church and State, included it in the architecture of their cathedrals and palaces of power.
Over the centuries, local churches and municipalities took up clock towers as symbols of their solidity and power. In 1650 a clock was installed in a Boston church tower, and in 1716 a clock was installed in New York’s city hall. Look about any county seat in the USA today and you’re likely to find either a church, school, or government building with a prominently mounted clock.
Come the industrial revolution, time became even more important, and public business interests grew to prominence. In England the tie between business and politics solidified as the traditional landed ruling class was gradually replaced in Parliament by industrial magnates. By the 19th century, business and popular government were erecting their own power architectures. In 1844 Dent put up the Royal Exchange clock, and in 1854 his step-son put up Big Ben in the rebuilt Parliament. You knew when you had arrived in the power elite when you could afford to put up a massive building with a large public clock.
Throughout most of the present century, banks have dominated the urban skyline, but more recently have had their place in the sun taken by the telecommunications industry. Thus Toronto’s beautiful turn-of-the-century churches, many with clocks, and it’s old City Hall were dwarfed by towers such as the Royal Trust Tower, the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower, the Scotia Bank Plaza, the Royal Bank Plaza, and the Bank of Montreal’s First Canadian Place, but now new structures such as BCE Place and the world’s tallest CN Tower begin to dominate. It is an architecture of economic might, and when it was still on a human scale, clocks were an important part of the towers, but now that the towers are so very tall, the clocks have become lost. We still build cathedrals, only they no longer have anything to do with religion or even with government.
And the local bank branches with their faulty digital signs pathetically proclaiming the time to a world in which we all have more watches and electronic clocks than we can keep track of? Just a vestige of a period when the banks’ public clock towers represented a cornerstone of social and economic stability.
Wow, that was beautiful muffin.
But is there anything shadier than a bank with a busted, half lit, mid-70’s era clock in front?
I figure that people associate a bank with stability, something that withstands the ravages of the time. Of course, they don’t.
A library would be a rotten place. The government runs those and you’re lucky if you can get those places to have visible clocks inside.
Mmmmm…beautiful muffin.
Muffin is my favorite newbie.
That’s an impressive answer muffin. I like the cut of your jib.
There’s only one problem I have with your answer- why is this only limited to banks?
As malden points out, why not a courthouse? The I.R.S.? Schools and universities?
If you’re trying to portray an air of economic and societal stability, as your answer suggests, why haven’t other institutions adopted this behavior?
Actually, if you think about it, “portray[ing] an air of economic and societal stability” is probably most important for institutions such as banks.
After all, a vital part of the business of a bank is the convincing the ordinary citizen to give up his or her money in the expectation that it will be returned. Remember that bank failures (and the resulting loss of depositors’ funds) were not uncommon prior to the banking reforms put in place during the Great Depression (FDIC, etc.).
How did banks portray “economic and societal stability”? One important way was the architecture and exterior features of the bank buildings. Bank branches built before the middle of this century are usually imposing physical structures – stone or marble with columns outside and barred windows. They seem to scream “this is a safe place that will endure and return you money.” The clock was just part of projecting that image.
Imagine in your mind the center of an old city or town. (Think the green of a Norman Rockwell New England town.) Around the town center are several large and imposing buildings. One is town hall, symbol of the government. Another would be a church, with a graceful spire pointing up to the heavens. Somewhere there will be a war memorial, honoring residents for the service and sacrifice they gave to their country. Perhaps there is the post office, signifying the vital bond of communication with the rest of the world. And right there in the center of town, along with the the pillars of god and government, will be the First National Bank, “symbol of economic and societal stability.” It’s likely that at least one of these institutions will have a clock on them.
(Another social institution that often has a clock is the giant old-line department store.)
It is from this tradition that modern digital time and temperature sign springs.
I believe that they have. That’s why I stated: “Look about any county seat in the USA today and you’re likely to find either a church, school, or government building with a prominently mounted clock.” I suspect that the likelihood of such a clock, the size of the clock, and the architecture on which the clock is mounted, would be determined by the economic power of the institution. I don’t have any data to support my assertion, though. Just recollections of seeing lots of clocks while on road trips through the USA.
I think it’s charming - as a kid growing up in the fifties, I depended on them - and if they are not accurate, so what? They’re a neat thing.
Funny thing I’ve noticed in Chicago this winter about banks and their clocks. Here we’ve had a very cold December and the banks suddenly stopped displaying the time and temp when it got low. In the morning I pass 6 banks and when the temp was below 10 degrees the temp didn’t show up just the time. Or they stopped all together. Then I started looking and I noticed it was happening all around. The day we hit only 7 degrees for a high I only found TWO banks with working temps…
So maybe banks try to avoid it when it is too cold.