Spring Break
It is time to rethink time
Seth Anthony
Issue date: 11/3/09 Section: Opinion
This past weekend, some hundreds of millions of Americans shared a common experience. No, not Halloween -- daylight-saving time came to an end, and we all got to sleep for an extra hour. In exchange for that momentary benefit, the sun now sets shortly after lunch.
At least that's not as bad as the "spring forward," when we lose an hour and struggle around in something resembling a drunken stupor until we adjust to dragging ourselves out of bed while it's still dark outside.Â
At these times of the year, I dust off my theory that daylight-saving time is actually a conspiracy by the military-industrial complex to steal time from us in the spring, store it in a warehouse in Area 51 and use it for nefarious purposes during the summer before giving it back to us in the fall. Since no one else thinks this is plausible, the next most convenient scapegoat is the Founding Fathers.Â
Although it's commonly believed that the great American sage and inventor Benjamin Franklin first came up with the idea, his suggestion of adjusting our schedules to make maximum use of daylight hours was actually part of a satirical plan which also included rationing candles and firing cannons at sunrise to wake people up.Â
Daylight-saving time's modern developer was actually New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson, who was more interested in having after-work daylight to catch insects -- not the most compelling case for resetting everyone's schedules twice each year. It wasn't until World War I, and an acute need to conserve electricity-producing coal, that setting clocks forward an hour during the summer month's caught on -- and it wasn't until the 1960s before daylight-saving time was standardized in the United States.
DST may have worked early in the century, when the biggest draw on the power grid was incandescent lamps, but these days, when heating, cooling and transportation are much bigger burdens on our electrical system, it's worth asking: Is the burden of shifting our schedules and our clocks twice a year worth the cost?
At least that's not as bad as the "spring forward," when we lose an hour and struggle around in something resembling a drunken stupor until we adjust to dragging ourselves out of bed while it's still dark outside.Â
At these times of the year, I dust off my theory that daylight-saving time is actually a conspiracy by the military-industrial complex to steal time from us in the spring, store it in a warehouse in Area 51 and use it for nefarious purposes during the summer before giving it back to us in the fall. Since no one else thinks this is plausible, the next most convenient scapegoat is the Founding Fathers.Â
Although it's commonly believed that the great American sage and inventor Benjamin Franklin first came up with the idea, his suggestion of adjusting our schedules to make maximum use of daylight hours was actually part of a satirical plan which also included rationing candles and firing cannons at sunrise to wake people up.Â
Daylight-saving time's modern developer was actually New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson, who was more interested in having after-work daylight to catch insects -- not the most compelling case for resetting everyone's schedules twice each year. It wasn't until World War I, and an acute need to conserve electricity-producing coal, that setting clocks forward an hour during the summer month's caught on -- and it wasn't until the 1960s before daylight-saving time was standardized in the United States.
DST may have worked early in the century, when the biggest draw on the power grid was incandescent lamps, but these days, when heating, cooling and transportation are much bigger burdens on our electrical system, it's worth asking: Is the burden of shifting our schedules and our clocks twice a year worth the cost?
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jimmy
posted 11/03/09 @ 6:51 AM MST
What a dumb column, places that are close to the Equator do not need daylight savings... Colorado approx 40 degrees North benefits greatly from daylight savings. (Continued…)
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