Spring Forward, Fall … Oh, What the Hell!

Daylight Savings Tine becomes an issue twice a year for one week at a time

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As you have probably figured out by now, today is the beginning of Daylight Savings Time (DST) in most of the USA. Set your clocks forward one hour: 9:00 becomes 10:00, noon becomes 1:00, and so on.

And, predictably as the arrival of spring — wait, why is it freezing this morning in Austin? — people are grumbling about the whole goofy institution of Daylight Savings Time. (There is less grumbling in the fall when folks get that illusory “extra hour of sleep.”) Where did this diabolical idea come from, and is the Trilateral Commission behind it? Or maybe the January 6th Commission? The fact that no one will care about this issue in one week does not mean I shouldn’t waste your time discussing it while the sun is shining, so to speak.

DST is Benjamin Franklin’s fault

DST critics like to blame that hoary (and whore-y) troublemaker Ben Franklin for its invention. According to them, it ranks up there with flying kites in lightning storms and postal workers as among his worst ideas. And we know how those turned out.

However, Ben did not invent Daylight Savings Time, strictly speaking. Instead, he wrote an essay in 1784 that observed the then-unappreciated fact that the sun rose in the morning and gave light. Seriously. I’ll let him tell the story:

An accidental sudden noise waked me about six in the morning, when I was surprised to find my room filled with light; and I imagined at first, that a number of those lamps had been brought into it; but, rubbing my eyes, I perceived the light came in at the windows. I got up and looked out to see what might be the occasion of it, when I saw the sun just rising above the horizon, from whence he poured his rays plentifully into my chamber, my domestic having negligently omitted, the preceding evening, to close the shutters.

Note the sophisticated scientific analysis he brings to this heretofore unexplored phenomenon. 1. The sun rises. 2. It gives light immediately. He elaborates:

Your readers, who with me have never seen any signs of sunshine before noon, and seldom regard the astronomical part of the almanac, will be as much astonished as I was, when they hear of his rising so early; and especially when I assure them, that he gives light as soon as he rises. I am convinced of this. I am certain of my fact. One cannot be more certain of any fact. I saw it with my own eyes. And, having repeated this observation the three following mornings, I found always precisely the same result.

On sharing his insights with fellow scientists, he was confronted with alternate explanations which, like any good scientist, he must consider in light (ha!) of the evidence:

One, indeed, who is a learned natural philosopher, has assured me that I must certainly be mistaken as to the circumstance of the light coming into my room; for it being well known, as he says, that there could be no light abroad at that hour, it follows that none could enter from without; and that of consequence, my windows being accidentally left open, instead of letting in the light, had only served to let out the darkness;

Like any good scientist, Franklin made additional observations which disproved his colleague’s theory. What Franklin did next, however, solidified his reputation for contriving practical applications to scientific theories. Follow along if you can: if we rise at 8:00 a.m. when the sun is up and shedding light, we can get things done during the daylight and will not have to use candles after nightfall, saving Parisians an estimated 96,075,000 livres tournois per year, or about $18.56 after inflation.

Thinking like this earned Franklin a place in the pantheon of great scientific minds, although it did not earn him a spot in the actual Panthéon in Paris.

Later writers have retconned Franklin by insisting that the essay was written in jest, and that the havoc wreaked upon our otherwise-manageable lives should be blamed on

Insects!

In 1895, an entomologist (a person who eats Entenmann’s baked goods) named George Vernon Hudson proposed the first modern DST to the Royal Society of New Zealand. “It all began because Hudson became frustrated because dusk came so early in summer that it interfered with his evening bug-collecting rounds -- his day job was at the Wellington Post Office. He figured the problem might be solved if the clock were advanced two hours in summer and then shifted back in the winter, when he wasn't bug-hunting anyway.”

(Reading between the lines, we might also conclude that Hudson, postal worker by day and bug collector by night, had a lot of free time on his hands, dating-wise.)

The Royal Society laughed him out of the room, but the idea slowly began to take hold and eventually was adopted by the

Germans!

Germans love to make the trains run on time. In fact, the modern German state did not arise until 1871, after widespread development of a railroad network necessitated its emergence. Daylight Savings Time was first conceived as a way to have all the late-running trains catch up at least once a year. Thus, the Berlin-to-Hamburg train, chronically running 15 minutes late, would arrive 45 minutes early through the magic of DST! Jubilation over this additional hour was dampened after Einstein pointed out that the law of thermodynamics required the subtraction of an hour somewhere else in the year. Nevertheless, Germany adopted DST in 1918 as an energy-saving measure. It was quickly followed by Europe and the United States.

After the war was over, and no longer needing to save energy, DST was repealed everywhere, but it was reinstated with the onset of World War II. I think we all know who’s to blame for that.

After the war ended, things got a little … confusing:

From 1945 to 1966, there was no federal law regarding Daylight Saving Time, so states and localities were free to choose whether or not to observe Daylight Saving Time and could choose when it began and ended. This understandably caused confusion, especially for the broadcasting industry, as well as for railways, airlines, and bus companies. Because of the different local customs and laws, radio and TV stations and the transportation companies had to publish new schedules every time a state or town began or ended Daylight Saving Time.

For a thorough, and thoroughly confusing, example of what happened, check out Indiana. I went to school there in the early 1970s, and times zones changed literally from town to town.

The status quo was completely disrupted by, of course,

Nixon!

At the onset of the OPEC energy crisis in the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon proposed “making daylight saving time permanent for the next two winters. Despite scant evidence of daylight saving time’s past benefit on the energy supply (dating back to DST’s various introductions since World War I), Americans really liked the idea.” However, the idea’s popularity was short-lived (not unlike Nixon’s),

Nixon’s proposal gave life to a new concept: move the clocks forward and then leave them there. This would be one of the three broad options we have. The other two are:

• eliminate DST altogether. Use standard time year-round.

• toggle back and forth between Standard and Savings time, but continue tinkering with the starting and ending dates.

The debate goes on. In any case, we will probably forget about all the drama until next November.

By the way, as the map below shows, much of the equatorial regions and the Southern Hemisphere have never tried DST, or have tried and abandoned it. The continued rotation of the earth, it seems, does not depend on whether we’re springing forward to falling back every year. And maybe the South Anericans are on to something …

So let us, in a spirit of humility and appreciation, enjoy the days of our lives — whenever we begin them.