I actually developed a prototype of this over 20 years ago. The idea is to have a clock that shows the time in the way humans tell eachother the time e.g. just gone quarter past 6, or nearly 10 ten 5, or 9 o'clock exactly. We developed a custom LCD with individual segments for each word/phrase (this was in the days before dot matrix displays were common/cheap). We built it into a a clear plastic block with a triangular cross section (a bit like a small Toblerone). Personally I think it would have sold many many thousands.

Ian