Saturday, November 4, 2017

Local Saturday - Is the Daylight to Standard Time Change Necessary?

Over 100 years ago, time was truly local.

Did you know there was a time when there were no standardized time zones in the United States?  And, that the Civil War was fought during that era?

As important as railroads were to the fighting of the Civil War, even the railroads hadn't yet found a way around coping with possibly up to 8,000 - yes, 8,000 - time zones in the United States. Local cities and towns set their own time, depending on the height of the sun in the sky to tell them when high noon was.  So, New York City might be on a different time than a city an hour away by train.  Just think of writing schedules, when every city had its own version of what time it was.

Each city and town having its own time worked when transportation was by walking or traveling by horse.  But, trains could run much faster.  A few years back, I found something interesting online - a map from 1861, published two months after the Civil War began - something called "Lloyd's Americn Railroad Map, Showing the Whole Seat of War." 

On the map is a device called a Time Dial, which the railroads used to try to keep track of all those different local times, at least for 28 different cities.
Even the Civil War couldn't standardize time.  I had a brief taste of this kind of non-standardization for several years where my spouse and I traveled through Indiana several times, during the 1980's.  Part of Indiana is on Eastern time. Part is on Central time.  Part was on Daylight time.  Part wasn't. 

Time wove back and forth and back and forth as we traveled from county to county. If we got out of our car to get gas, it was our best guess (in those days before Internet and cell phones) if we were on the same time as our last stop, an hour ahead, an hour behind, or even the dreaded two hours behind.  (This situation was somewhat fixed in 2006).
So, as to tomorrow:
 
At 2am tomorrow, most parts of the United States will suddenly gain an hour.  The clocks will move from 2 am to 1 am, while we (except for night workers and late partiers) sleep on.

Even by Monday morning, many of us will still feel disoriented as the sunshine outside does not match up to our internal clocks. I'll feel out of balance for another day or so, and I am not the only person.

In fact, more and more of us ask - why go through this annual exercise?

This thought is gathering steam now, because Massachusetts is considering going on year round Daylight Time - and perhaps even moving to the next time zone to the east, Atlantic Time. But they don't want to do it alone, and they may be asking other states, including my native New York State, to join them in ending the spring ahead, fall back dance.

Meanwhile, back to the 1800's. The railroads finally decided, in 1883, that they had had enough of local time. If the government wasn't going to standardize time, they would.  And so, on November 18, 1883, nearly twenty years after the Civil War ended, American and Canadian railroads started to use four standard time zones in the continental United States and Canada.  Municipalities and states followed.  And that is why we have "Standard" time zones even today.

Does your county or country go on Daylight Savings Time?  Do you like it?

25 comments:

  1. I can tell you I liked it when my kids were little because they went to sleep earlier since it was dark! At this point, I can take it or leave it.
    Thank you for sharing this point of view.

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    1. I have mixed feelings about going to year round daylight time - for one thing, I would be commuting to work in the dark for some four months a year. Ugh.

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  2. Clocks at 2 am will fall back to 1 am. Right? Imagine the movie High Noon if the shooters were in two different time zones.

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    1. Yes, I've corrected the error. See how disoriented I get just thinking about going back to Standard time?

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  3. I have always wondered the same thing, But as usual, we're falling back tonight.

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  4. Hi Alana,
    I did not know the history of this situation, and I'm a history teacher! It's been awfully dark in the morning when I leave for work and continues dark until after 7:00 am. I'm looking forward to it.
    Janice

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    1. I'm looking forward to commuting in daylight again (temporarily) but I don't like returning home in the dusk.

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  5. Interesting. I wondered when the whole time zone thing started. I am forever baffled by time since I live in Switzerland, which is 6 hours ahead of eastern standard time.

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    1. I'd be curious how and when Switzerland adopted daylight savings time. It may have been before the United States. Something for me to research.

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  6. Falling back is a bit disorienting, but springing forward is horrible. We’re on Daylight Saving Time many weeks longer than Standard Time. I think we should stick with DST, since Standard isn’t our standard anymore.

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    1. I have mixed feelings about year round DST, but I am so tired of springing ahead and falling back.

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  7. Daylight Saving Time is a real pain, and going to and from DST is a bear. During the "energy crisis" in the Seventies, we went on year-round DST, and no one complained. We've moved the clocks ahead; I don't see a reason to move them back.

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    1. I have dreadful memories of us going to DST in January of 1974 - I was in college and I remember walking to my 8am class (New York City) in the dark. Nixon intended us to have DST for two full years but his act was amended. Still, we almost had a taste of full DST and we did it because it was patriotic. I don't know how people would feel now.

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  8. We do "fall back" in fall and "spring forward" in spring here in Texas. I really have no strong opinions about it one way or another. During my years in the workplace, the changes were sometimes disruptive and disorienting. Now that I am retired, I tend to live by my own personal clock, one of the many perquisites of that status that I enjoy!

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    1. Ah retirement! Not quite there yet. I would do too much commuting in the morning dark for my taste if we went to year round DST. I wonder how successful the Massachusetts attempt will end up being.

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  9. Time could be an interesting discussing. I don't believe we need a daylight or standard time. Why not spilt the difference let say First day of fall 2019 we all set our clock back an half hour and call it good...and keep to it....Coffee is on

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    1. The splitting the difference, I know, has been suggested by some. No idea if the Massachusetts attempt to go year round DST will gain any traction and it will be interesting to see.

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  10. Fascinating! I had no idea we had so many local time zones. What a confusing mess!

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    1. If you think that, for a lot of our history, we couldn't travel quickly (only as quickly as a horse could trot, which might be up to 12mph, from what I've read)then everyone having their own local time makes a lot more sense. But it's hard to imagine living in that kind of world.

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  11. That's such interesting info about time changes. We switch back and forth here in California. I don't like getting up when it's dark but after a while we adjust.

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    1. We do adjust, but today and tomorrow will be hard. And then we'll go through it again, at least in New York State, on March 11 of next year.

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  12. Someone forgot to tell the cheetah as he came an hour later to wake me up for his treats.

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  13. Fascinating! Sharing this with Husby. Alberta is seriously considering scrapping the whole back and forth. It would be a relief!

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  14. Apparently, there was a year that they didn't go back to Standard Time. 1975. (I was looking something else up when I stumbled across this.) I guess there was a reason they didn't keep doing this.

    Personally, I don't care much. I observe the sturm und drang twice a year. I don't say much otherwise.

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