The Times They Are ‘A Changing

The end of daylight saving time (DST), that sudden plunge into winter’s darkness, is upon us: This Sunday at 2 a.m., remember to roll your clocks back that extra hour to standard time.

In the days that follow the ritual of “springing forward” or “falling back,” you can count on lively coffee-break complaints about body clock confusion, taping the wrong show, or needing your nine year-old to change the car computer. The jetlag from a New York to Chicago jaunt is hardly worth mentioning, but the biannual switch up always gets good mileage.

Now there's something new for DST cynics and advocates to flap about. Starting in 2007, we’ll get roughly an extra month of DST. The clocks will spring ahead the second Sunday in March, and we will lose the privilege the first Sunday in November. All of continental USA observes DST, save for parts of Indiana and most of Arizona.

The new regime, part of the 2005 Energy Policy Act, is an attempt to save billions of barrels of oil per day. According to the California Energy Commission, household energy consumption is linked to how many hours there are between sunset and bedtime. When we go to bed we turn off lights, TVs, stereos and the like, appliances that account for about 25 percent of home energy consumption. We’re also more likely to be outside engaged in non-energy consumptive activities during those “longer” spring and summer evenings. Studies done in the 1970s by the U.S. Department of Transportation found that each and every day of DST shaves another percent from the country's total electricity bill.

Looking Back at Springing Forward

The bright idea for daylight saving goes back to Ben Franklin who offhandedly suggested in a 1784 letter that we’d make better use of daylight if we weren’t sleeping through it, hence, we’d be wise to wake an hour earlier in the summer. However, it was British builder, William Willett, who turned DST into a political cause with his 1907 pamphlet The Waste of Daylight. In it he argued that the people of Great Britain and Ireland could save themselves £2.5 million per year on the cost of artificial light – gas, oil and candles.

There’s a commonly held misconception in the U.S. that DST was started to help farmers, when in fact the case is the opposite. DST was first instituted during WWI, at the same time as standard time zones, to conserve fuel. The Act was passed in March 1918 and exactly two weeks later it went into effect (no computer programmers to keep busy for two years first). The measure was extremely unpopular, particularly amongst farmers who couldn’t convince their cows and chickens to change their clocks. So strong was the opposition that the Act was repealed as soon as the war ended a mere seven months later. After that, it was left up to each locality to decide whether to adopt DST or not – most did not.

In 1942, DST was reintroduced as a temporary wartime measure, with similar reception. So, once again, it reverted to being a jurisdictional matter at war’s end in 1945. The crazy patchwork of time zones that resulted proved increasingly troublesome for broadcasters and transportation companies. For example, on a 35 mile bus trip from Ohio to West Virginia you’d have to adjust your watch seven times.

There was heated debate about what should be done with farmers, business owners (the outdoor theatre industry hated DST) and various levels of government all weighing in. Finally, in 1966 DST was standardized nationally although entire States were allowed to opt out.

Little Known DST Facts

Draft Dodging Advantage: In the book Seize the Daylight': A History of Clock Chaos by David Prerau, the author, tells of a Delaware man who born shortly past midnight, DST. The man successfully skirted the Vietnam War draft by arguing that he was actually born the previous day since standard time, not DST, was the official time for recording births.

Accidental Suicide Bombers: In September 1999, to accommodate the Jewish prayer schedule for the holydays, Israel turned its clocks back earlier than normal. The Palestinian West Bank, refusing to comply with “Zionest Time,” did not. This saved the lives of countless Israelis when two coordinated bombs went off an hour prematurely while still being transported by Palestinian terrorists. Apparently, the terrorist on either side of the border hadn’t coordinated their watches.

Busy Period for Psychiatrists: Apparently, after we “fall back” an hour, depression and suicides increase; the home spun jetlag also messes up people’s sleep cycles, which is bad news particularly for parents with newborns. Living Longer: According to the September issue of the Journal of Periodontology, a chance to enjoy extra daylight can help us live longer. That’s because the “best means of obtaining the required amount of vitamin D is from sunshine” and vitamin D, along with calcium, are considered essential for preventing diseases of the bones and teeth.

Accident Increase: Stanley Coren, a Canadian researcher who analysed two year’s worth of accident reports, found that traffic collisions increased by roughly seven percent the Monday after the spring time change robbed drivers of an hour’s sleep; accidents likewise decreased by a similar rate when the clocks changed in the fall. Coren has also found that several of the world’s largest accidents can be attributed to a lack of sleep, including the Exxon Valdez oil spill, space shuttle Challenger’s explosion, and the nuclear meltdown in Chernobyl.

Possible Birth Rite Confusion: When DST was first instituted in Britain in 1916, it required the adding or subtracting of 80 minutes on four consecutive Sundays, which caused mass confusion: When should the 1 pm castle gun be fired and what about tides charts? Some concerns were even more profound, as Lord Balfour explained: “[On the night the clocks are set back] supposing some unfortunate lady was confined with twins and one child was born 10 minutes before 1 o'clock. ... the time of birth of the two children would be reversed. ... Such an alteration might conceivably affect the property and titles in that House.”