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It made sense decades ago to give farmers an extra hour of daylight in crop season. I like long summer days too, when it's still light at 9:30pm.
Some of you might know clocks are another of my obsessions. There are 62 running clocks in the house. Keywind, corded electric and battery quartz.
No, I don't reset them all on seasonal time changes. I reset all the striking clocks for EST/DST except two electronic movements that are complicated to do it. The others stay on DST year round.
The one that started the clock obsession. My Williamson grandparents' Ingraham kitchen clock that they bought used when they married in 1905. Clock itself dates to around 1880. Unfortunately this site won't support video of it running, among other things it won't do, so here's a picture.
And my crown jewel. 1956 Atmos. I also have a 1950 Atmos that needs attention, but since every time I get some money set aside for that, something else a little more essential breaks...
Oh please. This is an amazingly overworked subject.
It’s that twice-annual time of year again. The dreaded changing of the clocks either to or from daylight savings time.
EVERY TIME we come to this time of year, like clockwork (heh heh), we see in the press articles with the same tired complaints from this or that group about what’s wrong with DST and how horribly it affects some subgroup of the population. I have one request. Either deal with it and change the law, or shut up! We’ve had DST for the better part of a century now. Whatever its flaws, we’ve learned to live with it, and life goes on. Now that the time change has occurred, the whining will quickly die out, only to rear its ugly head again in November when we'll do it all over again.
Ugh!
P.S. The worst thing about DST is that we are told to change the batteries in our smoke detectors every time the time changes. Why? What a colossal waste of batteries. Smoke detector batteries last far longer than six months (my experience is about three years), and have you ever met a smoke detector that DIDN'T emit an annoying beep when it was time to change the battery?
This change-the-battery thing was surely promulgated by the battery industry to sell more batteries.
Because they are a sovereign entity and can do what they want.
That's not an answer. If there are good climate/whatever reasons that caused Arizona to abandon DST, you'd think that the Navajos would find those same arguments apply to them, being in the same place, after all.
The real reason Arizona refuses to follow DST is because they want to be a pain in the *** to the rest of the country.
Of the 48 contiguous states, they're the only one that doesn't follow DST. Indiana didn't either, but they rescinded that in 2006.
It's helpful for the entire country to follow the same time-observing process.
Hawaii doesn't follow DST, but we can make an exception there. They're down by the equator, and changing the clocks by an hour doesn't do much to shift daylight around. Also, they're not attached to any other state, so you don't have people living in places like Yuma, Arizona or other border areas where their neighbors a quarter mile away can be on the same time they are for half the year and then be an hour different for the other half. That must wreak semi-havoc for people who live in that area and work in one state but live in the other.
I'd as soon it stay one or the other year round, preferably DST. I'd want it to be nationwide though.
I live 1/10 mile from the VA/NC state line. I do business in both states. If one were to switch and the other didn't everything around here would be screwed up as a heart attack.
I loved Indiana not changing time. We were on Eastern Standard. In case anyone cares, Indiana is in the Eastern Time Zone, with the exception of five counties in the NW and SW corners. Evansville, and the four counties around it, are on central time. The other county is Lake (and there may be another up there) near Chicaaahgo, and they follow the Windy City.
In the height of the summer, daylight here is 5:15 am to 8:45 pm, which is wonderful. Other parts of the state are 6:15 am to 9:45 pm, which is too late for this longitude in the time zone (i.e, we're too far west for that.) However, I get bit in the winter, which is light from 7:00 am to 4:30 pm. I'd much rather not change, be on the time we were, and have light from 8 to 5:30. But, I get the right time for 8 months of the year, for which I am grateful.
It could be worse. China observes the Peoples' Standard Time and, while it is right for Beijing and Shanghai, in western China, it is out whack.
It made sense decades ago to give farmers an extra hour of daylight in crop season.
I have heard that as the reason too, as well as the one about factory workers needing daylight to go to and from work but I don't buy it. Not saying really saying it is not the reason I just reject the resononing behind it. Farmers work when there is daylight regardless of what time the clock says it is, and sometimes even when there isn't daylight. Their schedules are determined by more practical things like nature, cows have to be milked, crops have to go in or be tended to or be harvested, etc. Factory workers needing light to go to work? Really?
Personally, it's never bothered me that much. If there was one issue, it would be when I used to work allot of night shifts in the Navy. In the spring it was great because a 12 hours shift became only 11 hours. But then in the fall, that 12 hour shift became 13. Which could suck a bit.
And when we were underway it didn't matter at all because we would switch to "Zulu" time.
I have heard that as the reason too, as well as the one about factory workers needing daylight to go to and from work but I don't buy it. Not saying really saying it is not the reason I just reject the resononing behind it. Farmers work when there is daylight regardless of what time the clock says it is, and sometimes even when there isn't daylight. Their schedules are determined by more practical things like nature, cows have to be milked, crops have to go in or be tended to or be harvested, etc. Factory workers needing light to go to work? Really?
The factory worker one is bullshit. Night shift has been a thing since the industrial revolution.
My mother's beagle does not change times. She wants up when it's light, bed when it's not, like a farmer.
The purpose of daylight savings time was not to help farmers. As has been noted, farmers work when it’s daylight regardless of when during the day it’s actually daylight.
No, daylight savings was created during World War I to SAVE ENERGY. Most people tend to be awake from between about 6 or 7 a.m. to maybe 9 or 10 p.m. It makes sense to shift the time that actual daylight occurs to match up with those hours as much as possible so that people have less need to turn on their lights at home. Daylight beginning at 4 a.m. or even 5 a.m. doesn’t help much as most people are still asleep then. Ditto for staying light past 10 p.m. Once the war ended, it was realized that there were other benefits to shifting daylight to later in the day, so DST was continued.
The U.S. was on permanent DST during World War II.
More recently, anyone remember that short time during the energy-short ‘70s (1974) when we were actually on DST year-round for a while? The idea again was to keep pushing more daylight into the evening hours in hopes that energy would be saved. But serious problems arose in the western edges of the various time zones where it remained dark until after 9 a.m. This had children waiting for schoolbuses in the dark, car accidents, and other unpleasantness. So it was relatively quickly abandoned. The original law had the U.S. on DST year-round for two years to see how it went, but it was only eight months before it was abandoned. Why this late-morning darkness was not a problem during the war is never mentioned. I guess the imperative to save energy for the war effort won out over any negative effects of permanent DST. After all, sacrifice was the order of the day during the war.
The British did observe what was called Double Summer Time during World War II where the clocks were moved ahead two hours.
What’s also interesting is how the observance of DST in the U.S. has changed over time. Originally it was six months on, six months off (April to October). It has been creeping slowly longer, becoming seven months on and five months off in 1986. Now, in going from first the weekend in March to the first weekend in November, it’s eight months on DST and four months off. That’s probably as far as they’ll go because any more increase would run into the too-dark-in-the-morning problem.
I loved Indiana not changing time. We were on Eastern Standard. In case anyone cares, Indiana is in the Eastern Time Zone, with the exception of five counties in the NW and SW corners. Evansville, and the four counties around it, are on central time. The other county is Lake (and there may be another up there) near Chicaaahgo, and they follow the Windy City.
In the height of the summer, daylight here is 5:15 am to 8:45 pm, which is wonderful. Other parts of the state are 6:15 am to 9:45 pm, which is too late for this longitude in the time zone (i.e, we're too far west for that.) However, I get bit in the winter, which is light from 7:00 am to 4:30 pm. I'd much rather not change, be on the time we were, and have light from 8 to 5:30. But, I get the right time for 8 months of the year, for which I am grateful.
It could be worse. China observes the Peoples' Standard Time and, while it is right for Beijing and Shanghai, in western China, it is out whack.
Same here!! I hated coming home at 3:30, and having 45 minutes, maybe an hour of daylight.
What’s the supposed Indian proverb about cutting off a foot from one end of a blanket, sewing it on the other and thinking it’s longer?? I’m pretty sure it was mentioned frequently when Our Man Mitch (the govenor at the time) pushed daylight savings time on us.
What’s the supposed Indian proverb about cutting off a foot from one end of a blanket, sewing it on the other and thinking it’s longer??
This is not a good analogy. Switching to DST does not, of course, change the length of a day. It's still 24 hours. It does, however, change when daylight occurs during the 24 period, which is the whole point.
This is not a good analogy. Switching to DST does not, of course, change the length of a day. It's still 24 hours. It does, however, change when daylight occurs during the 24 period, which is the whole point.
The AMOUNT of daylight per day doesn’t change, regardless of what the clock says.
If Indiana had left things alone, it wouldn’t be dark at 4:30 in the afternoon.
Hate it, but what the heck, I'm retired now, does it really make a difference at this point...............
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I think it is good for the economy .... main drive.
Back when a farmer had 4 horses and a 2two bottom, now the have 1000 horses and GPS guided 12-14-16-32-bottom with an app to let them know the expected yield per acre based on soil and moisture content.
DST was introduced in countries around the world during the 20th century with the intention of lowering energy consumption and aligning sunlight hours to be more amenable to active work hours in the summertime. When DST was imposed in the United States through the passage of the Uniform Time Act of 1966, however, the people of Arizona realized that this time change would have the opposite effect.
Because Arizona is so hot and sunny, the additional hour of daylight meant energy consumption would soar so as to keep living spaces cool for that extra hour. People were also unhappy waiting an hour longer to enjoy activities outside after sunset—which would happen at 9 p.m., making those summer activities fall late in the evening (a particular problem for people who had to work the next morning). Arizona therefore opted out of DST in 1967 and chose to remain on Standard Time.
Same here!! I hated coming home at 3:30, and having 45 minutes, maybe an hour of daylight.
I was stationed in Holyloch, Scotland for a little over 3 years and the winters were a little rough until you got used to the darkness. Sunrise at 10:30am, sunset at around 3pm.
Summers were much better though. The sun hardly set. It just became twilight from about 11pm-3am when the sun would rise again.
