When did the time change originate? Why do we still do it?

[scotrace]

We've set our clocks forward an hour.
Again.

Where does this come from? Why are we still doing it? And which time schedule is the original, "correct" one?

Changing the clocks twice a year seems like a long way around the barn to remind us to replace batterie in the smoke detector.

 

[Aristaeus]

During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt instituted year-round Daylight Saving Time, called "War Time," from February 9, 1942 to September 30, 1945.

http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/e.html

 

[Espee]

I think it only accomplishes something (saving energy by having work and school sessions line up with daylight) in Spring and Fall. In Winter, the sky will often remain gloomy after you've started in the morning, and again before you've finished in the afternoon. (If not all day.) In Summer, the sun has been up for quite a while before you start, and will be up for quite a while after you head home.

 

[lolly_loisides]

I don't think the US was the first nation to introduce daylight savings. Australia introduced it during WW1 in 1917. I'm sure we weren't the first to implement it.

 

[Gin&Tonics]

The story I heard of its origins is that it was instituted by Benjamin Franklin as a method to save on expensive candles during winter months by maximizing the hours of daylight (ergo reducing the need to burn candles) and that Canada simply adopted it because we so often fall in line with our big brother to the south. YMMV as to how true this account is.

 

[Gene]

I KNEW they had changed DST recently (2007), because I always remember it being in April and not March. Wow, I must be pretty slow, I just now learned that fact!

 

[Pompidou]

It's a lot easier to order people to change their clocks than it is to order everyone to adjust their schedules. It does kinda make sense. I used to think it was the dumbest idea ever. Someone had an analogy about cutting a foot off the top of a blanket, sewing it to the bottom, and believing you somehow ended up with a longer blanket. All daylight savings time really is is not tucking the foot of the blanket as far into the mattress so that you've got more of it to keep warm with.

 

[Jaguar66]

Then there is the farmers wife who wrote in, complaining that the extra hour of daylight was burning her flowers.

 

[lolly_loisides]

Then there is the farmers wife who wrote in, complaining that the extra hour of daylight was burning her flowers.

Ha, yes all that extra sunlight ruins the curtains :eusa_doh:

 

[Edward]

I hate it. I'D much rather go onto one set time year round. I'd trade off darker mornings against lighter afternoons happily. What I'd really prefer, though, is for UK time to go an hour ahead, to be in the same timezone as all our surrounding European neighbours (bar ROI, which is still on the same time as the UK, though it would make sense for them to switch too).

 

[LizzieMaine]

It started in the US during World War I as a way of saving coal -- and was highly unpopular. It was then repealed as a Federal law after the war, but was made a local option -- it continued on a confusing state-by-state or city-by-city basis from then until War Time was imposed in 1942. After the war it went back to local option, and didn't become Federal law again until 1966. The rationale this time was simply one of standardization -- having multiple time zones within the regular time zones wrought havoc on transportation company schedules and the broadcasting industry.

Some will remember we went on emergency extended DST for most of 1974 and part of 1975 due to the Energy Crisis. Schoolchildren walked to school in the dark, and many districts issued reflector tape for them to stick to the back of their coats. DST in February was considered a rather stupid idea by most, since there was so little D to S.

 

[Nathan Dodge]

Some will remember we went on emergency extended DST for most of 1974 and part of 1975 due to the Energy Crisis.

We certainly learned a valuable lesson from that, as the U.S. is now totally free of the tentacles of Middle East oil.

 

[Spitfire]

I can tell you that Fidel Castro doesn't believe in changing the time either!
When we were in Cuba some years ago, we were constantly one hour late to everything the first three days, because we set our zulu plus one hour time directly to Cuban. We thought. But nobody told us, that in Cuba they don't do that summer/winter time nonsense. So for three days we entered the restaurant for breakfast after they officially stopped serving breakfast. Luckily for us nobody shrugged their shoulders - they just smiled politely and served us omelets and whatever we wanted. Nice and charming people. Stupid tourists!

 

[rue]

Move to Arizona and you won't have to deal with it

 

[LizzieMaine]

Or move to Atlantic Canada and really get messed up -- you'll be half an hour behind or ahead of everybody else.

 

[MisterCairo]

From that most venerable of sources (sorry, Bede) Wikipedia (apparently, we can blame a Kiwi for modern usage):


During his time as an American envoy to France, Benjamin Franklin, publisher of the old English proverb, "Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise",[SUP][21][/SUP][SUP][22][/SUP] anonymously published a letter suggesting that Parisians economize on candles by rising earlier to use morning sunlight.[SUP][23][/SUP] This 1784 satire proposed taxing shutters, rationing candles, and waking the public by ringing church bells and firing cannons at sunrise.[SUP][24][/SUP] Franklin did not propose DST; like ancient Rome, 18th-century Europe did not keep precise schedules. However, this soon changed as rail and communication networks came to require a standardization of time unknown in Franklin's day.[SUP][25][/SUP]

G.V. Hudson invented modern DST, proposing it first in 1895.


Modern DST was first proposed by the New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson, whose shift-work job gave him leisure time to collect insects, and led him to value after-hours daylight.[SUP][8][/SUP] In 1895 he presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society proposing a two-hour daylight-saving shift,[SUP][26][/SUP] and after considerable interest was expressed in Christchurch, New Zealand he followed up in an 1898 paper.[SUP][27][/SUP] Many publications incorrectly credit DST's proposal to the prominent English builder and outdoorsman William Willett,[SUP][28][/SUP] who independently conceived DST in 1905 during a pre-breakfast ride, when he observed with dismay how many Londoners slept through a large part of a summer's day.[SUP][29][/SUP] An avid golfer, he also disliked cutting short his round at dusk.[SUP][30][/SUP] His solution was to advance the clock during the summer months, a proposal he published two years later.[SUP][31][/SUP] The proposal was taken up by the Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) Robert Pearce, who introduced the first Daylight Saving Bill to the House of Commons on 12 February 1908.[SUP][32][/SUP] A select committee was set up to examine the issue, but Pearce's bill did not become law, and several other bills failed in the following years. Willett lobbied for the proposal in the UK until his death in 1915.
Starting on 30 April 1916, Germany and its World War I allies were the first to use DST (German: Sommerzeit) as a way to conserve coal during wartime. Britain, most of its allies, and many European neutrals soon followed suit. Russia and a few other countries waited until the next year and the United States adopted it in 1918. Since then, the world has seen many enactments, adjustments, and repeals.[SUP][33][/SUP]

 

[rue]

Or move to Atlantic Canada and really get messed up -- you'll be half an hour behind or ahead of everybody else.

Now that would be weird!

 

[MisterCairo]

Now that would be weird!

Newfoundland time is 30 minutes ahead of Atlantic time! It's a Canadianism - tv show broadcast times go "See it tonight at 8 o'clock, 8:30 in Newfoundland!".

I had a teacher in stitches with a cartoon I'd drawn of a doomsday guy wearing a sandwhich board which read "The world will end at 12 o'clock - 12:30 in Newfoundland".

I guess you had to be there....

 

[Atticus Finch]

My uncle was in England before D-day and for a while after the war ended. He said that during WWII, the time there changed twice. First, there was "daylight saving time". Then, during the peak of the summer, they went to "double daylight saving time". Because England is much closer to the Arctic Circle than North Carolina, and because they observed double daylight saving time, the sun set in England much later than my uncle had ever seen it set. In fact, he said it didn't get pitch dark until almost 11:00 PM. This caused dear Uncle Jule much consternation. He was dating a proper, young English lady but couldn't take her "parking" because she had to be home by ten...an hour before it got dark.

BTW…North Carolina didn’t adopt DST until the mid sixties. This was sometime after Virginia began using it. I remember visiting my parent’s friends in Hampton Roads and setting our watches ahead an hour…and not understanding the value of doing so. Now that I am an adult, and have grass to mow and a never ending “Honey Do” list, I fully understand the value of daylight saving time. It lets me keep my weekends free for more important things, like fishing.

AF

 

[Flicka]

I remember when we started doing that here. Personally, I'd like for someone to figure out how to save up darkness in order to get proper ninghts April - July