In May 2000, it was reported that the clock was planned to be unplugged on September 7, 2000, what would have been Seymour Durst's 87th birthday. With the original purpose of the clock being to highlight the rising debt, the reversal of the figures gave a mixed message, added to the fact that the display not being designed to properly run backward.
It showed a national debt of $5.7 trillion and an individual family share of almost $74,000. In early 2000, the clock started to run backward because the national debt was actually decreasing. The cause was attributed to the numbers "being too high." In response, Artkraft installed a new computer inside the clock. In 1998, the clock broke down shortly after the numbers surpassed $5.5 trillion. As a result of a federal government shutdown, the clock was frozen at a value of $4,985,567,071,200. On November 15, 1995, the clock stopped counting up for the first time in its six years of operation. Artkraft Strauss has been keeping the figures current since then. After his death, his son Douglas became president of the Durst Organization, which owns and maintains the clock. Up until the week before his death in May 1995, Durst himself adjusted the tally via modem. Durst vowed that the clock would "be up as long as the debt or the city lasts," and that "if it bothers people, then it's working." Similar to the second clock, the updating mechanism was such that the display was set to the estimated speed of debt growth ( odometer-style) and adjusted weekly according to the latest numbers published by the United States Treasury. Built by the New York sign company Artkraft Strauss, the clock featured a dot-based segment display emulating the then-typical character resolution of 5-by-7. It was mounted on a now-demolished Durst building at Sixth Avenue near 42nd Street (a block from Times Square), facing the north side of 42nd Street and Bryant Park. It cost $500 per month to maintain the display's 305 lightbulbs. The national debt stood at US$2.7 trillion that year. The first National Debt Clock was installed on February 20, 1989. The first clock at the original location near Times Square (March 1989) In 2017, the clock was moved to One Bryant Park, near the original location. The lit dollar-sign in the clock's leftmost digit position was later changed to the "1" digit to represent the ten-trillionth place. national debt exceeded $10 trillion, one more digit than the clock could display. In 2004, the clock was dismantled and a new one installed near 44th Street and Sixth Avenue. The clock's first incarnation was installed in 1989 on Sixth Avenue between 42nd and 43rd Streets, one block away from Times Square, by New York real estate developer Seymour Durst, who wanted to highlight the rising national debt. It was the first debt clock installed anywhere.
It is currently installed on the western side of One Bryant Park, west of Sixth Avenue between 42nd and 43rd Streets in Manhattan, New York City. The National Debt Clock is a billboard-sized running total display that shows the United States gross national debt and each American family's share of the debt. The clock at its former location near Sixth Avenue and 44th Street in February 2017, at which time it read $19.9 trillion in national debt
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