Duncan Column for Oct. 28, 2005
Going bleary eyed into daylight
By BILL DUNCAN
The View From Here column for Oct. 28
My wife, peering out in the black of night early one morning this week, asked sleepily when Daylight Savings Time ends. She doesn’t have long to wait. Daylight Savings Time ends at 2 a.m. on Sunday.
The black of night will be brighter when she awakes Monday morning, if she remembers to turn the clocks back. Each year this is an end of October ritual.
At least it is in all the areas where Daylight Savings Time is observed. The entire state of Arizona is always on Standard Time. It is the only state not to recognize Daylight Savings Time. However, in some areas a city may be on DST, but the county folks remain on Standard Time.
How did all this confusion come about? Civilizations have always measured time based on the movement of the sun. Ancients used sun dials. When mechanical clocks were invented telling time was a bit more accurate, however no two clocks were ever exactly the same.
England was the first country to adopt a standard time in order to keep its railroads on time. Great Britain established Greenwich Mean Time using a clock set by the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England. Even today that is the standard by which time is kept.
In America, William Lambert, an amateur astronomer, recommended Congress establish time zones. His recommendation was ignored and it was not until 11 years later that the United States and Canada adopted time zones.
In 1918, the Standard Time Act became law establishing standard time zones as set up by the railroads. Authority over this system was given to the Interstate Commerce Commission, the only federal transportation regulatory agency, but in 1966 Congress established the Department of Transportation and the responsibility passed to it.ÂÂ
The theory of daylight savings time was first advanced by Benjamin Franklin. The theory was just that until Germany and Austria adopted it in April 1916 to save energy in World War I. Britain, at war with Germany, quickly followed suit.
The United States didn’t adopt daylight savings time until 1918, but Congress, reacting to the cantankerous rural Americans who didn’t like messing around with God’s time, repealed the act a year later. President Franklin D. Roosevelt reenacted daylight savings time in 1942. It was called “war time” and came off the books in 1945 at the end of World War II.
It became a perennial subject in Congress until finally in 1966 Congress adopted the Uniform Time Act, better known as daylight savings time. The new act left the adoption up the state legislatures whether to accept daylight savings time, or remain on standard time.
Only Arizona continues to hold out for standard time.
Daylight savings time begins on the first Sunday in April and annually ends on the last Sunday in October, but that is all about to change in 2007. Daylight savings time will start on the second Sunday in March and will end on the first Sunday in November. In August, President Bush signed an energy bill extending daylight savings time by four weeks starting in 2007.
Daylight savings time has always had a love hate relationship in the United States. Nationally, Parent Teacher Associations have oppose the time change on the grounds that school children have to walk to school in the dark.
When I was in church this past Sunday, the clergy reminded the congregation that next Sunday they’d be early to church if they didn’t set their clocks back. In the spring my wife always complains about losing an hour of sleep when the clock springs forward.
Me? Regardless of time changes I wake up every day happy to be alive
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470 or by contacting his blog at www.theduncansonline.com/elderstatesman)