Daylight Saving Time
Up until I picked up this book, "Sping Forward - The Annual Madness of Saving Time" by Michael Downing, I had no idea that there was anything controversial about Daylight Saving Time. For me, it is something that has been a constant since I was born (1968) and it was not something that I questioned too much or thought about... Other than the usual "why do we have it" and I was shocked to discover that none of the reasons I had been given were correct. In fact, I was surprised to discover that my penfriends overseas all observed it as well. The Bean and the mainland Europeans all do it the last Sunday in March and the last Sunday in October, but otherwise it is rather identical to what we do.
Michael Downing has a wonderful book and I was surprising to discover how recently the idea came about - for governments. Be Franklin actually mentioned it in 1784; however, a Mr. Willet in England first pitched it in 1907. Parliament voted it down. American drafted it first in 1909 but things move slowly in politics, so it wasn't put into action until 1918. And it bombed. No one wanted it except the white collar golf freak who was relegated to getting out on the green only on the weekends. Now of course, when one asks about why we have Daylight Saving Time, there are the standard answers (just the same as the ones that I got): the farmers lobbied for it; school children need it. Those were always the answers I was given. It turns out to be propaganda. The farmers absolutely hated it and schoolchildren were quite indifferent to it. The government pushed for it not only for the snobs of the world who wanted to have that extra hour of sunlight at the end of the day to play golf but tried to sell it to John Q. Public as a means of saving a ton of energy. The public is apparently not that stupid.
Part of the problem in the earliest history was time. Time was not the super accurate science that it is now. UTC (Universal Time) and GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) came about in the late 1880's to eliminate the confusion with time - where are we in relationship to others. And as an added bonus there was the International Date Line, an unnecessary item that creates more confusion than it actually solves.
I did learn a whole boatload of things about calendars:
(Taken from Chapter 6: Mean Time)
"When you think about it, there's something wrong with time. You don’t have to be a physicist to spot the oddities. Look at the calendar: September, October, November, December. The names of those months come to us directly from the Latin. But we have a correspondence problem. Our ninth month is named for seven (septem), the tenth for eight (octo), the eleventh for nine (novem), and the twelfth for ten (Decem). The Roman calendar was a famously inaccurate stew of religious and political ambitions, with only 304 days, ten months, and an unspecified catchall period at the end of this so-called year. These extra days were eventually codified into January and February, originally the eleventh and twelfth months. But the duration of these two months was constantly altered to lengthen or abbreviate the terms of political appointees, and after many years of manipulation, January had migrated into the autumn. The Romans ultimately developed a 365-day calendar, borrowing from the Egyptians, who had managed this feat about five thousand years earlier. Like most calendars, the revised Roman-Julian version relied on the occasional insertion of a longer year, a leap year. Even with these adjustments, though, it was not until the sixteenth century that the Roman kinks were worked out, largely thanks to Pope Gregory, who had the leap years recalibrated and, to set things aright, waved his holy hand and eliminated 10 days from the year 1582. Unlike Daylight Saving, this new Gregorian calendar was not an immediate hit in Great Britain, where papal powers were suspect. Calendars in England and in the colonies remained 11 days out of sync with those of other nations until 1752.
What is a month? Again, look at a calendar. One month appears to be an annually recurring sequence of days ranging in number from 28 to 31. Months were originally based on lunar cycles. The Maori worked with a strictly lunar calendar, but because there are roughly 12 1/2 lunar cycles in any given year, their New Year's Day changed annually, and they occasionally needed a thirteenth month. Contemporary lunar calendars are principally used to maintain religious and ceremonial traditions. Like the Egyptians, the ancient Chinese and the Maya used solar and astronomical observations to produce 365-day calendars that were not marred by irregular lunar months. Instead their calendars used recurring periods of 60 or 20 days, rounded off by predictable leap days as needed.
What is a month? It depends on how you look at it. A lunar month is the average time between two full moons, or approximately 29 days, 12 hours, and 44 minutes. A solar month is the time lapse between two passages of the sun through the vernal equinox, or about 30 days, 10 hours, 29 minutes, and 3.8 seconds. A sidereal (star-based) month is the time taken for the moon to complete one revolution around the earth as measured by the observation of a fixed star, which adds up to something like 27 days, 7 hours, and 43 minutes.
These profound variations and complications have been with us for centuries, and yet in the twentieth century, the most sustained public controversy about time focussed on one allegedly saved hour of daylight. The moderns were not unaware of their ancestors. "If Congress turned as often to Roman precedent as often as the fathers of the republic," editorialized The Nation in 1918, "the Daylight Saving bill would have passed long ago; for the Romans were confirmed daylight savers." Like many cultures, the Romans divided daylight into twelve equal hours, so that each hour varied seasonally from 45 minutes to 75 minutes, lengthening as the earth tilted Rome toward summer. And "Roman occupations of the day being arranged with reference to sunrise," continued the Nation:
The Roman who began work with the fourth hour, would on the longest day of the year, when the sun rose at about 4:50 A.M. and set at 7:50 P.M., reach his officina at 8:35; on the shortest day, when it rose at 7:40 A.M. and set about 5:40 P.M., he would be there about 9:50. Thus was accomplished in summer a saving of an hour and a quarter."
It seems that there was quite a bit more confusion than anyone had thought. I had known about the issues with the Ceasarian calendar - that there were ten months and that they were malleable depending on the length of the year and terms in office. I did not know that January and February came in to cover months eleven and twelve... I always knew that a sidereal year is different from that of our standard year. I knew the difference between a solar and sidereal month as well - this is all astronomy 101. No one in astronomy uses the solar times or lunar times - we use sidereal times.
I guess a controversy should always remain so. Either that or the temptation to muck about with time was too much for George Bush Jr to avoid, so he has done the following:
Date change in 2007
On August 8, 2005, President George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This Act changed the time change dates in the U.S. Beginning in 2007, DST will begin on the second Sunday of March, and end the first Sunday of November. Note that the Secretary shall report to Congress on the impact of this change. Congress retains the right to revert the Daylight Saving Time back to the 2005 time schedules once the Department study is complete.
Spelling & Grammar:
The official spelling is Daylight Saving Time, not Daylight SavingS Time.
Saving is used here as a verbal adjective (a participle). It modifies time and tells us more about its nature; namely, that it is characterized by the activity of saving daylight. It is a saving daylight kind of time. Similar examples would be dog walking time or book reading time. Since saving is a verb describing a single type of activity, the form is singular.
Nevertheless, many people feel the word savings (with an 's') flows more mellifluously off the tongue, and Daylight Savings Time is also in common usage, and can be found in dictionaries.Part of the confusion is because the phrase Daylight Saving Time is inaccurate, since no daylight is actually saved. Daylight Shifting Time would be better, but it is not as politically desirable.
I guess the next logical question (since this is my blog) is where do I stand on Daylight Saving Time. I love it. That's right. While usually I can be counted on as having the dissenting opinion on almost anything, this is one institution that I love and embrace. And as much as I despise Bush (and I really, really do with every unemployed fiber of my being) I do like the new legislature of tacking on a month to daylight savings. I am not totally unaffected by it. I never experience any difficulties in the spring when we spring forward. True, we do "lose" an hour but it is not something I'm aware of. I usually stay up late on those two Saturday nights anyway and change the clocks prior to going to bed. I have to be careful to change them all, however, or I will be in trouble. No, the spring is fine. In the autumn, when I change the clocks back and "gain" that lost hour, I am a mess! It takes a good solid two to four weeks to adjust to the morning change. At night I am not too bad, other than the feeling that 1800 feels like midnight. But getting up in the dark not once but twice as the days grow shorter presents a problem or three. I found myself having the devil's own time staying awake in the mornings.
But I can adjust and I love the sun setting close to 2100 in the evenings!
Michael Downing has a wonderful book and I was surprising to discover how recently the idea came about - for governments. Be Franklin actually mentioned it in 1784; however, a Mr. Willet in England first pitched it in 1907. Parliament voted it down. American drafted it first in 1909 but things move slowly in politics, so it wasn't put into action until 1918. And it bombed. No one wanted it except the white collar golf freak who was relegated to getting out on the green only on the weekends. Now of course, when one asks about why we have Daylight Saving Time, there are the standard answers (just the same as the ones that I got): the farmers lobbied for it; school children need it. Those were always the answers I was given. It turns out to be propaganda. The farmers absolutely hated it and schoolchildren were quite indifferent to it. The government pushed for it not only for the snobs of the world who wanted to have that extra hour of sunlight at the end of the day to play golf but tried to sell it to John Q. Public as a means of saving a ton of energy. The public is apparently not that stupid.
Part of the problem in the earliest history was time. Time was not the super accurate science that it is now. UTC (Universal Time) and GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) came about in the late 1880's to eliminate the confusion with time - where are we in relationship to others. And as an added bonus there was the International Date Line, an unnecessary item that creates more confusion than it actually solves.
I did learn a whole boatload of things about calendars:
(Taken from Chapter 6: Mean Time)
"When you think about it, there's something wrong with time. You don’t have to be a physicist to spot the oddities. Look at the calendar: September, October, November, December. The names of those months come to us directly from the Latin. But we have a correspondence problem. Our ninth month is named for seven (septem), the tenth for eight (octo), the eleventh for nine (novem), and the twelfth for ten (Decem). The Roman calendar was a famously inaccurate stew of religious and political ambitions, with only 304 days, ten months, and an unspecified catchall period at the end of this so-called year. These extra days were eventually codified into January and February, originally the eleventh and twelfth months. But the duration of these two months was constantly altered to lengthen or abbreviate the terms of political appointees, and after many years of manipulation, January had migrated into the autumn. The Romans ultimately developed a 365-day calendar, borrowing from the Egyptians, who had managed this feat about five thousand years earlier. Like most calendars, the revised Roman-Julian version relied on the occasional insertion of a longer year, a leap year. Even with these adjustments, though, it was not until the sixteenth century that the Roman kinks were worked out, largely thanks to Pope Gregory, who had the leap years recalibrated and, to set things aright, waved his holy hand and eliminated 10 days from the year 1582. Unlike Daylight Saving, this new Gregorian calendar was not an immediate hit in Great Britain, where papal powers were suspect. Calendars in England and in the colonies remained 11 days out of sync with those of other nations until 1752.
What is a month? Again, look at a calendar. One month appears to be an annually recurring sequence of days ranging in number from 28 to 31. Months were originally based on lunar cycles. The Maori worked with a strictly lunar calendar, but because there are roughly 12 1/2 lunar cycles in any given year, their New Year's Day changed annually, and they occasionally needed a thirteenth month. Contemporary lunar calendars are principally used to maintain religious and ceremonial traditions. Like the Egyptians, the ancient Chinese and the Maya used solar and astronomical observations to produce 365-day calendars that were not marred by irregular lunar months. Instead their calendars used recurring periods of 60 or 20 days, rounded off by predictable leap days as needed.
What is a month? It depends on how you look at it. A lunar month is the average time between two full moons, or approximately 29 days, 12 hours, and 44 minutes. A solar month is the time lapse between two passages of the sun through the vernal equinox, or about 30 days, 10 hours, 29 minutes, and 3.8 seconds. A sidereal (star-based) month is the time taken for the moon to complete one revolution around the earth as measured by the observation of a fixed star, which adds up to something like 27 days, 7 hours, and 43 minutes.
These profound variations and complications have been with us for centuries, and yet in the twentieth century, the most sustained public controversy about time focussed on one allegedly saved hour of daylight. The moderns were not unaware of their ancestors. "If Congress turned as often to Roman precedent as often as the fathers of the republic," editorialized The Nation in 1918, "the Daylight Saving bill would have passed long ago; for the Romans were confirmed daylight savers." Like many cultures, the Romans divided daylight into twelve equal hours, so that each hour varied seasonally from 45 minutes to 75 minutes, lengthening as the earth tilted Rome toward summer. And "Roman occupations of the day being arranged with reference to sunrise," continued the Nation:
The Roman who began work with the fourth hour, would on the longest day of the year, when the sun rose at about 4:50 A.M. and set at 7:50 P.M., reach his officina at 8:35; on the shortest day, when it rose at 7:40 A.M. and set about 5:40 P.M., he would be there about 9:50. Thus was accomplished in summer a saving of an hour and a quarter."
It seems that there was quite a bit more confusion than anyone had thought. I had known about the issues with the Ceasarian calendar - that there were ten months and that they were malleable depending on the length of the year and terms in office. I did not know that January and February came in to cover months eleven and twelve... I always knew that a sidereal year is different from that of our standard year. I knew the difference between a solar and sidereal month as well - this is all astronomy 101. No one in astronomy uses the solar times or lunar times - we use sidereal times.
I guess a controversy should always remain so. Either that or the temptation to muck about with time was too much for George Bush Jr to avoid, so he has done the following:
Date change in 2007
On August 8, 2005, President George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This Act changed the time change dates in the U.S. Beginning in 2007, DST will begin on the second Sunday of March, and end the first Sunday of November. Note that the Secretary shall report to Congress on the impact of this change. Congress retains the right to revert the Daylight Saving Time back to the 2005 time schedules once the Department study is complete.
Spelling & Grammar:
The official spelling is Daylight Saving Time, not Daylight SavingS Time.
Saving is used here as a verbal adjective (a participle). It modifies time and tells us more about its nature; namely, that it is characterized by the activity of saving daylight. It is a saving daylight kind of time. Similar examples would be dog walking time or book reading time. Since saving is a verb describing a single type of activity, the form is singular.
Nevertheless, many people feel the word savings (with an 's') flows more mellifluously off the tongue, and Daylight Savings Time is also in common usage, and can be found in dictionaries.Part of the confusion is because the phrase Daylight Saving Time is inaccurate, since no daylight is actually saved. Daylight Shifting Time would be better, but it is not as politically desirable.
I guess the next logical question (since this is my blog) is where do I stand on Daylight Saving Time. I love it. That's right. While usually I can be counted on as having the dissenting opinion on almost anything, this is one institution that I love and embrace. And as much as I despise Bush (and I really, really do with every unemployed fiber of my being) I do like the new legislature of tacking on a month to daylight savings. I am not totally unaffected by it. I never experience any difficulties in the spring when we spring forward. True, we do "lose" an hour but it is not something I'm aware of. I usually stay up late on those two Saturday nights anyway and change the clocks prior to going to bed. I have to be careful to change them all, however, or I will be in trouble. No, the spring is fine. In the autumn, when I change the clocks back and "gain" that lost hour, I am a mess! It takes a good solid two to four weeks to adjust to the morning change. At night I am not too bad, other than the feeling that 1800 feels like midnight. But getting up in the dark not once but twice as the days grow shorter presents a problem or three. I found myself having the devil's own time staying awake in the mornings.
But I can adjust and I love the sun setting close to 2100 in the evenings!
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