Installed in the clock tower of a new building for The Stout Manual Training School in 1897, the large and expensive bell sounded the hours of the day and symbolized the school's promising future. Founded in 1891, the institution later became the University of Wisconsin-Stout. In 1914, the bell's striking mechanism became inoperative and was not repaired. For years, students climbed the tower stairs and struck the bell with hammers to celebrate football victories and other events, and this treatment cracked the bell so that it no longer rang. It remained in the tower as an electric carillon replaced it in marking time for the campus and community. In 1997, the bell was removed, and the carillon was replaced with five bronze bells through several generous donations to the Stout University Foundation, Inc. In 1999, faculty member Benjamin Pratt and students David Larson, David Loewe, and Deborah Podsedly designed a monument to display the historic bell in its final home as a tribute to the institution's history and a symbol of its promising future.