One Busy Guy examines...

    Daylight Savings Time 

Congress has recently extended Daylight Savings Time by 4 weeks.

Yet another idea from the very prolific Benjamin Franklin. Good old Ben first suggested this change at a conference in Paris circa 1784 as an economical change. 'Summer Time' (or 'Daylight Savings Time' as we know it) as the name implies, is to help people make better use of the daily hours of sunshine. The US department of transportation took a poll (as they so often do) and determined that people liked having more daylight in the early evening. Somewhat inconsequentially it was also discovered that the nation saved about 1% of its' daily energy consumption due to the change. The additional hour of light during the evening commute has actually illustrated a decline in pedestrian fatalities since vehicle operators see better.  

A London builder named William Willet published a pamphlet in 1907 entitled 'A Waste of Daylight'. Willet proposed that clocks might be set ahead 15 minutes on each of four Sundays in April and then back on each of four Sundays in September (Can you imagine how awkward that change might have been?).

A bill was drafted for parliament in 1909 but was voted down several times (mostly by farming interests). Willet passed away in 1915 never knowing that the Brits had adopted 'Summer Time' only one year later in May of 1916. This was done mostly to conserve energy (they wanted to save coal). After all the war was on and Germany had already made this same concession.


Somewhere in the forties the USA adopted 'war time' for similar reasons. When the second world war had ended we kept the concept now known as 'Daylight Savings Time'.  

Folks with any kind of sleep disorder are allied in their general dislike of 'Daylight Savings Time'. Most of us have come to accept the reality therein; spring ahead, fall back. Sometimes we joke that maybe the bars will stay open an hour later on the first Sunday of November. In truth it's just another Fall day, except now it's dark in the morning instead of being dark in the evening.

Daylight Savings Time extends from the 2nd Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November. 

Doing my bit to quench your thirst for knowledge!

                           Steve  

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