Spring Forward, Fall Back - Daylight Saving time, C or D

My life used to be drugs, techno and parties, now it's books, camping and Eastenders....

(on the minus side I finish at 6.30 on a good day, so I'm resigned to nighttime home journeys, but that's just not as bad)

Didn't Benjamin Franklin come up with the idea? So no.

Bugs the hell out of me. Going home in the dark is even more so, though, so I'm glad that I miss that for the most part.

(I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE long winter nights, I despise them, months at a time of them would drive me to screaming insanity, and it's for this reason I strongly doubt I'd live anywhere more north of where I currently am.)

Didn't Benjamin Franklin come up with the idea? So no.

I thought DST was started in WWII (or was it WWI) to save energy - so although Ben Franklin discovered that lightning will send a jolt through you, I don't think he invented DST .. according to my recollection. (i.e. He may have invented it - what purpose would it have served in Ben Franklin's time?)

Some of Franklin's friends, inventors of the oil lamp, were so taken by the scheme that they continued corresponding with Franklin even after he returned to America.

The idea was first advocated seriously by a London builder, William Willett (1857-1915), in the pamphlet "Waste of Daylight" (1907) that proposed advancing clocks 20 minutes on each of four Sundays in April, and retarding them by the same amount on four Sundays in September. As he was taking an early morning a ride through Petts Wood, near Croydon, Willett was struck by the fact that the blinds of nearby houses were closed, even though the sun was fully risen. When questioned as to why he didn't simply get up an hour earlier, Willett replied with typical British humor, "What?" In his pamphlet "The Waste of Daylight" he wrote:

"Everyone appreciates the long, light evenings. Everyone laments their shortage as Autumn approaches; and everyone has given utterance to regret that the clear, bright light of an early morning during Spring and Summer months is so seldom seen or used".

- Why are farmers against daylight saving time?

Because they're idiots. They claim DST makes them get up when it's pitch dark. Like hell. Farmers can get up when they want (subject to the OK of the cows, of course). Except on market days they don't have to be in sync with the rest of us. They just don't feel like resetting the alarm. TFB.

IDIOCY OF FARMERS EXPLAINED:

Dear Cecil:

As a farmer, I resent being called an idiot. The reason we are against daylight saving time is that our crops can't stand the extra hour of sun in the dry part of the year. They burn up and wilt. --J. Bass, Dallas, Texas

xpost

Opponents say that being out of synch with Canada will wreak havoc with airline scheduling and having to sell two types of computer systems in North America. Mothers are worried about their children standing in the dark mornings waiting for the bus.

Supporters say that those same kids will be able to enjoy Halloween in the daylight!

I say one or the other: PICK ONE TIME, AMERICA!

i made a thread or two about this a coupla months ago when the energy bill was getting punted around, i think.

U.S. Congress rejects measure to curb oil demand over the next 8 years

That's neither here nor there. I'm just mad that the line in "Celebrated Summer" about how sometime in April they add another hour isn't going to be relevant anymore.

Endless Summer
By MICHAEL DOWNING

Cambridge, Mass.

CONGRESS has an amazing new scheme to cut crime, automobile fatalities and energy consumption. There is one hitch. We have to stay in bed until sunrise during the first week of November - lights out, televisions and radios off and please stay away from that coffee maker.

Of course, doing so might interfere with breakfast, school attendance, morning workouts and jobs. That's because during that week, the sun won't rise until 7:30 a.m. at the earliest. If you live on the western edge of your time zone, expect darkness until 8:30 a.m. Sorry, Boise. Good night, Grand Rapids.

Congress has extended daylight saving time by four weeks: In 2007, our clocks will spring forward on the second Sunday of March and fall back on the first Sunday of November. And frankly, there may be another hitch or two in the plan.

First, the trick of shifting unused morning light to evening was intended to exploit long summer days, when sunrise occurs between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m. Standard Time - hours of daylight that do not exist during the short days of March and November.

Second, after nearly 100 years, daylight saving has yet to save us anything.

The idea of falsifying clocks was proposed by the British architect William Willett in 1907, but the Germans were the first to try it in 1916, hoping that it would help them conserve fuel during the First World War. Then Britain and America gave their clocks a whirl. The fuel savings never materialized, and daylight saving was so unpopular here that Congress repealed it before officially declaring an end to the war.

That most Americans still believe we save daylight to help farmers tells you something about the quality of debate on this perennial controversy. In fact, farmers hated daylight saving. They needed morning light to get their dairy and crops to markets, and they were powerful enough to rally popular opinion against the law. For that reason, except during the Second World War, Congress did not dare to pass a national daylight saving policy for almost 50 years.

It was New York City that kept the practice alive, and it did so by passing a local daylight ordinance in 1919. This served the powerful department stores, which wanted evening light to tempt working people to shop on their way home. Wall Street profited, too; fast time preserved one hour of overlap with London traders, whose clocks sprung forward every year.

By 1965, 71 of the largest American cities practiced daylight saving and 59 did not. One airline reported 4,000 calls a day from customers asking what time it would be in their destination cities. The United States Naval Observatory dubbed the nation "the world's worst timekeeper."

And so in 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which gave us six months of Standard Time and six months of daylight saving. This wise compromise has since been compromised out of existence. We now face eight months of daylight saving. Before we bargain our way into a permanent, year-round policy, we should know whom we have to thank for saving us nothing.

Richard Nixon infamously mandated year-round daylight saving in 1974 and 1975. This decision did not soften the blow of the OPEC oil embargo, but it did put school children on pitch-black streets every morning until the plan was scaled back. A Department of Transportation study concluded that Nixon's experiment yielded no definitive fuel saving. It optimistically speculated, however, that daylight saving might one day help us conserve as many as 100,000 barrels of oil a day. Based on that projection and the hope of reducing street crime, in 1986 and again this year Congress extended daylight saving by a month. But there has been no corresponding reduction in oil consumption or crime.

The new four-week daylight saving extension won't save fuel or lives, but it will put our clocks seriously out of sync with Europe's, costing airlines $150 million a year. It will foul up clocks in computers, confuse trade with our continental neighbors and make it impossible for many Jews to recite sunrise prayers at home.

Sure, later sunsets will encourage Americans to go outside - to the mall or the ballpark - but this will only put more cars on the road for more hours of the day. The petroleum industry recognized daylight saving's potential to increase gasoline consumption as early as 1920. And it is a sweet deal for retailers: candy makers have long lobbied to extend daylight saving past Halloween. In 1986, the golf industry told Congress the extension would boost fees and retail sales by as much as $400 million annually. The barbecue industry saw a $150 million bonanza. And 7-Eleven convenience stores stocked up for a $50 million rise in sales.

I am a fan of long summer evenings and of social policy that promotes conservation. But I can't promise I won't turn on a light until 8:30 in the morning. Come November, wouldn't it make more sense for Congress to leave the clocks alone, ask us to turn down our thermostats at night and maybe spring for a pair of flannel pajamas?

Michael Downing is the author of "Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Tonight's the night, fellow Americans!

The baby had chocolate today and just went down thirty minutes ago. For once, I am thankful for this abomination of manufactured time.

the rudest weekend

One of my favorite nights of the year b/c tomorrow night the sun will be out till 6:45 p.m.! I will finally get my life back. That's no exaggeration - I haven't been OK and it's going to take some work to get back on track.

seconded

i do hate shortening the weekend, so i'm taking Monday and Tuesday off.

hawaii remains still but my writing gig is on the mainland, so all my deadlines are now an hour earlier >:(

I've received a survey from my local congressman asking about opinions on the recent time change legislature. I don't have an opinion any way, as I'll get used to it, but I was wondering if there's any foreseen implications of any of the resolutions offered. Is there a general preference/dislike for any of them?

(Personally, the only thing I don't want is to continue changing clocks twice a year. Sorry if this has already been discussed recently elsewhere. Please direct, if so.)

(london)
it's November 30th until it's as dark in the mornings as it was on saturday morning.
Then it's worse, but only for 2 months.
Then january 30th or so it'll be as light in the mornings as it was.

all our servers are locked to utc so server logs will be easier to read for the next 6 months.

without daylight savings time it'd be light at 3am in the mornings in the height of summer.

I can't wait for light.

they should just make it so that every day has 25 hours

the bright day is done and we are for the dark (until 29 march)
— shakespeare