Well, I’m getting ready to “sleep in” in the morning because it’s that time again – time to change the clocks. There will be the usual few days of disorientation as it’ll take a while to remember which clocks we changed and which we didn’t – I usually always find one we missed a week or so later.
The big proponent of Daylight Saving time was Ben Franklin, and he’s often given the credit for coming up with the idea, but a number of people thought of it, so no one really knows whose “idea” it was…
Every fall we “fall back,” or set the clocks back one hour.
One of the first people that suggested the idea had a selfish reason for doing so – George Vernon Hudson worked in the post office in New Zealand and his hobby was collecting bugs. He just wanted more time to pursue his hobby after work. He suggested the clock change to the government, but it took New Zealand thirty-two years to adopt the practice of changing the clocks (in 1927.)
The United States first tried Daylight Saving Time in 1918, but dropped it after two years. DST was optional for each state until 1966, when it became mandatory unless an individual state legally opted out of the system Currently Arizona and Hawaii are the only states that don’t observe DST.
Antarctica has 24 time zones, but has continuous daylight in the summer and continuous dark in the winter, so research stations located there keep the same time as their home countries (to co-ordinate work and shipping schedules and communications.)
Almost everyone has an opinion about DST – some hate it, some love it, most don’t understand it and can never remember which way the clock is supposed to go when. There are controversies as to whether it causes more or less accidents, causes diseases or if it does or doesn’t save energy.
To all those people, I say – it’s only an hour – get over it.
-30-