DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME

Beautiful sunrise, even with Daylight Saving Time

            Published March 4, 2011 in Intermountain Farm and Ranch

              Daylight Saving Time is almost upon us once again. “They” say young children have a hard time adjusting to this time change and I say they are not the only ones with adjustment problems. I’ve done some research, trying to find out who I can blame for this biannual disruption in my life. 

            There are a lot of stories about how, why and when this all started. One is that is was introduced to help the farmers have more time to do their work. Well, farmers work according to the light available, not according to the clock. A change in time doesn’t make a difference to agriculture. A poll conducted by the U.S. Department of Transportation indicated the reason Americans liked Daylight Saving Time is that they enjoyed the recreational opportunities offered by long summer evenings.

The idea of Daylight Saving Time was conceived by Benjamin Franklin in 1784 when he was in Paris as an American delegate. Some friends of Franklin, who had invented a new kind of oil lamp, applauded this conception. However, nothing was done about this until 1907 when a London builder by the name of William Willett wrote a pamphlet “Waste of Daylight”, proposing that clocks be advanced 20 minutes on each of four Sundays in April, and moved back the same amount of time on four Sundays in September. About a year after Willett began lobbying for Daylight Saving Time, it attracted the attention of those in authority. In 1908 Robert Pearce – later Sir Robert Pearce – introduced a bill in the House of Commons making it mandatory to adjust the clocks. Though introduced in Parliament several times, this bill met with ridicule and opposition, especially from farming interests.

            Daylight Saving Time was instituted in the United States during World War I in order to save energy for war production by taking advantage of the later hours of daylight between April and October. During World War II, the federal government again required the states to observe the time change. Between the wars and after World War II, states and communities chose whether or not to observe Daylight Saving Time, causing much confusion. In 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which standardized the length of Daylight Saving Time.

            A 1975 study done by the US Department of Transportation (DOT) showed that because there was less electricity used for lighting and appliances Daylight Saving Time trimmed electricity usage by a small but significant amount,. The rational behind this study showed a direct relationship between energy used in the demand for electricity for lighting homes and the times when people went to bed at night and got up in the morning. Although a 1976 report by the National Bureau of Standards disputed the 1975 DOT study, and found that Daylight Saving Time-related energy savings were insignificant, the DOT study continued to influence decisions about Daylight Saving Time. Actually, determining energy savings from Daylight Saving time is difficult and based on a variety of factors. It’s possible that little or no energy is saved by this change of time.

            Not all areas observe Daylight Saving Time. Arizona (except some Indian Reservations), Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa have chosen not to.  European nations have been taking advantages of the time change for decades. Iceland observes year-round Daylight Saving Time. And Antarctica, where there is no daylight in the winter and months of 24-hour daylight in the summer, still have many of their research stations observe Daylight Saving Time to synchronize with the supply stations in Chile or New Zealand.

            But it really doesn’t matter if we switch to Daylight Savings Time or not: the cows need to be fed whether the clock says 2:30 or 3:30; the crops need to be planted  and irrigated, no matter what time the sun comes up or goes down; and the voles don’t seem to be affected much. I personally would like to see Daylight Saving time either completed abolished or moved to a permanent, year-round time. Then the young children and I wouldn’t have to go through this miserable process of adjustment twice a year!