For example, later sunset times have dramatically increased participation in afterschool sports programs and attendance at professional sports events.
Today we know that changing the clocks does influence our behavior. Great For Golf – But What About Everyone Else? So, in 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which mandated six months of standard time and six of daylight saving. Naval Observatory dubbed the world's greatest superpower "the world's worst timekeeper." A 35-mile bus trip from Steubenville, Ohio, to Moundsville, West Virginia, passed through seven distinct local time zones. The Chamber of Commerce spurred along this movement on behalf of department store owners, who had noticed that later sunset times encouraged people to stop and shop on their way home from work.īy 1965, 18 states observed daylight saving six months a year some cities and towns in 18 other states observed daylight saving for four, five or six months a year and 12 states stuck to standard time. In 1920, New York and dozens of other cities adopted their own metropolitan daylight saving policies. But like most weeds, the practice thrived by neglect. Within a year, daylight saving was repealed. Enraged rural and evangelical opponents thereafter blamed daylight saving for subverting sun time, or "God's time." Newspapers were deluged by letter writers complaining that daylight saving upset astronomical data and made almanacs useless, prevented Americans from enjoying the freshest early morning air, and even browned out lawns unaccustomed to so much daylight. In 1918, Easter Sunday fell on March 31, which led to a lot of latecomers to church services. On March 19, 1918, Woodrow Wilson signed the Calder Act requiring Americans to set their clocks to standard time less than two weeks later, on March 31, they would be required to abandon standard time and push their clocks ahead by an hour for the nation's first experiment with daylight saving. The patriotic rationale for daylight saving went like this: Shifting one hour of available light from the very early morning (when most Americans were asleep) would reduce the demand for domestic electrical power used to illuminate homes in the evening, which would spare more energy for the war effort. But Congress also tacked on the legal mandate for the four continental time zones. From Patriotic Duty To Moneymaking SchemeĪ law requiring Americans to lose an hour was confounding enough. And despite fanatical opposition from the farm lobby, so would the United States. Within a year, Great Britain followed suit. Then, in 1916, Germany suddenly adopted the British idea in hopes of conserving energy for its war effort. While proponents argued that shoving clocks ahead during summer months would reduce energy consumption and encourage outdoor recreation, the opposition won out. The clocks were calm for almost 30 years, but for an annual debate in the British Parliament over whether to pass a Daylight Saving Act. In 1883, the economic clout of the railroads allowed them to replace sun time with standard time with no legislative assistance and little public opposition. They needed synchronized, predictable station times for arrivals and departures, so they proposed splitting up the globe into 24 time zones. To railroad companies around the world, that wasn't acceptable.
Making The Trains Run On Timeįor centuries people set their clocks and watches by looking up at the sun and estimating, which yielded wildly dissimilar results between (and often within) cities and towns. But it has proven to be a fantastically effective retail spending plan. Despite its name, daylight saving has never saved anyone anything. It's absurd – and fitting – that a century later, opponents and supporters of daylight saving are still not sure exactly what it does. Instead, relying on the same overly optimistic math that led the original proponents of daylight saving to predict vast energy savings, crisper farm products harvested before the morning dew dried and lessened eye strain for industrial workers, Florida legislators are lauding the benefits of putting "more sunshine in our lives." The cost of rescheduling international and interstate business and commerce hasn't been calculated. If approved by the federal government, this will effectively move Florida's residents one time zone to the east, aligning cities from Jacksonville to Miami with Nova Scotia rather than New York and Washington, D.C.
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