Fall Back …
Idnit it funny how we fall back and spring forward?
I don’t really get it – why it has to happen I mean. This changing of the time is weird. To me time is one of those things in life that is inalterable – it’s there – just is. Time is stable, unfluctuating … like a minute of time is universal, an hour is always going to be an hour and we have it to spend and it passes by no matter what we do. And then here we are, 2X per year, deciding that we going to change it.
Well, I was curious and did a search and came up with two informative articles about when all this started and the why in the world it started and you can click over and take a look. You can go to the National Geographic magazine and read this. Just click … Daylight Savings Time 2009: When and Why We Fall Back.
However, in their explanation I don’t think they really answer the question of why … But there’s this note Why Do We Use Daylight-Saving Time? And their thoughts were more interesting pinpointing two men – Mr. Franklin and Mr. Hudson.
Franklin wrote a letter to the French in 1784, satirically suggesting the French wake up with the sunrise in order to save on candle wax. He proposed that the French would save “64 million pounds of candle wax” by getting the most out of the ‘natural’ light of day. Don’t you know he had fun figuring that out!
Then there’s this guy … the idea of literally turning back the clock to take advantage of sunlight during the waking hours came from New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson. In his biography it states, “His shift-work job made him aware of the value of the daylight hours, and on 16 October 1895 he presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society advocating seasonal time adjustment.”
In the United States, the World War I effort to conserve coal was the reason some of the States actually started turning back their clocks. The original idea was to save energy, but it was never a requirement to change the clocks. So, it was all haphazard until The Uniform Time Act of 1966 came about … still allowing States to opt in or out to daylight-saving time, but it did set a national date for the changes to take place.
Most researchers have found that due to lifestyle changes, the original goal of conserving energy no longer holds – well, yeah, I mean, how many of us use candles or shovel coal into our furnaces every day? Shifting the daylight just shifts the time that the electricity is used. Even so, in 2007, the federal government added about four additional weeks to the time interval of daylight-saving time.
So, yes, it’s pretty standard, we spring forward in late March and fall back in early November. But get this: “The legislation was pushed by retailers, who felt that longer sunlight at night led to an increase in shopping.” I thought this was odd since now we have these 24-hour conglomerate stores in bookoos of communities and retailing seems to be doing just fine at night – when it’s dark outside. And doesn’t this just ring true, in our materialistic society, that this would all boil down to the almighty dollar? I guess whether it is 1794, or 1895, or 2009 … ya gotta save a buck or make a buck when the sun is shining.
So, anyway, to me it just seems even more odd – changing the clocks. But, too, the influence of a couple of men and their sway over thought of how time is handled. I wonder if Franklin or Hudson ever dreamed that one day in the far off future, so much of the world (most of Europe and the US) would be adjusting their clocks 2X per year thus appreciating the value of daylight hours.
I woke up on schedule this morning at – what? 5:30! I went ahead and got up because you see, my internal clock does not recognize this silly thing we do in ‘falling back’.
I dunno, but idnit it funny how we fall back and spring forward?
Tags: life:what-it's-made-of
(meant AM) see above
I agree about this daylight savings time stuff. I was driving my niece to work last week because it was dark when she was leaving at 7 PM. What we lose in non-productiveness, trying to readjust body clocks especially in the spring, seems to cancel out any profit made by readjusting the time. Somebody should do a study on this.