08/06/2026
Throwback Thursday. Back to the past. The first TYME machine in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (which is the ATM, stands for "automated teller machine").
I still say TYME machine, as a Wisconsinite ๐. What say you, Wisconsinites, now or once was a Wisconsinite?
TYME machines started in 1975, when four Milwaukee-area banks, First Wisconsin National Bank, Marshall & Ilsley, Marine Bank of Milwaukee, and Midland National Bank, pooled roughly a million dollars to organize one of the very first shared electronic funds transfer networks anywhere in the country. The name stood for "Take Your Money Everywhere," and Marine Bank vice president John David Squier pushed hard enough to get the other banks on board that he earned the nickname "Father TYME" among people who worked on the project.
The first actual transaction happened December 1, 1976, when M&I board member J. Frederic Ruf withdrew $20 from a First Wisconsin National Bank machine on Water Street in downtown Milwaukee. TYME launched with 75 participating banks and savings and loans, and organizers were ambitious from the start, hoping to install as many as 40 ATMs in Milwaukee-area grocery stores, including Pick 'n Save, Sentry, Jewel, and even Kohl's, within just a couple months of launch. It worked. By 1979, the founding banks had already recouped their entire initial investment, and by 1986 TYME was processing more than two million transactions in a single month.
What made TYME genuinely unusual, beyond its early adoption of shared ATM banking, was how completely it took over the local vocabulary. Wisconsinites didn't just use TYME machines, they started calling every ATM a "TYME machine," regardless of which network actually ran it. That habit stuck hard enough that Wisconsinites traveling out of state would ask locals where to find "the TYME machine" and get nothing but confused stares in return, a small but genuine marker of just how deeply the brand had replaced the generic term in everyday Wisconsin speech. At its peak, the network covered roughly 27,000 ATMs across Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and Florida.
The original brand didn't survive the 2000s. TYME merged with the Pulse Network in 2002, and the name was formally retired in 2004, ending a nearly 30-year run as one of Wisconsin's most recognizable financial brands. It stayed gone for almost two decades, until Landmark Credit Union brought the name back in 2022, launching new TYME Advanced ATMs across its Southeastern Wisconsin branches, complete with an 80s-themed launch event featuring a DeLorean parked outside and comedian Charlie Berens hosting. For longtime Wisconsinites who grew up saying "TYME machine" without a second thought, the branding wasn't just nostalgia marketing, it was the actual word finally coming back into circulation.