A Brief History of Daylight Saving Time - Not a history geek? No worries. You can read my computer geek Daylight Saving Time post, instead.
Daylight Saving Time -or- Macro vs. Micro:
It’s weird what a big deal I’m making over daylight saving this time round by putting a time twist on the macro perspective is not by choice so much as it is due to the fact that it’s impossible not to obsess over the history which is very much the story of individuals struggling to bring a micro concept to the macro arena where it belongs.
According to the Franklin Institute:
Benjamin Franklin was the inventor of Daylight Savings Time. No one had conceptualized the idea prior to Franklin’s 1784 satirical essay on the topic. It wasn’t until 1907, however that the English builder, William Willett propsed a Daylight Savings Time bill. Neither Franklin’s satirical nor Willett’s sincere efforts to brings this idea came to fruition came about during their lifetimes.
Contentious DST Component Established & Nixed
Daylight Saving Time was established as law in the U.S. by the Act of March 19, 1918 (sometimes called the Standard Time Act). The primary purpose of the law was to officiate the time zones that the railroads had unofficially been using since 1883. Although the contentious DST component of that bill was appealed in 1919, the standard time zones remained.
DST Finally Re-established
During World War I, Germany nationally established a DST and other European countries soon followed, including England –where Willet’s idea had been previously ridiculed. Early into World War II, DST was finally nationally re-established in the United States.
Love and Loss
My beloved analog atomic clock will take a few days to catch up. In the meantime, I will feel that significance of time passing and continue to organize and structure my precious writing hours as its large, clunky hands catches up with the change. The fact that time gets lost during this atomic hickup –which, btw, has something to do with the dialogue it has with its NIST sponsored mothership, causing a few days of confused uncertainty before it sets itself straight, again— appeals to me.
Maximization through ubiquity
I admire the passion and dedication Franklin and Willett had for honoring and maximizing the precious hours of the day at a time when no one took their ideas seriously. Then the concept, like my atomic clock, finally connected to the mothership and became the new, ubiquitously acknowledged measuring standard.
Blogs, websites, social media and Daylight Saving TimeBlogs, websites and social media, like Daylight Saving Time, maximize your potential. The creation of content with sticking power and resonance, however, requires good writing. If you need help developing quality online content to promote your business, email a website link and a tweet-length description of your business goals to:
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Peter Orvetti has become unstuck in time.
I think of that phrase on those two work nights each year when the clock jumps in the middle of my work shift. It is odd springing ahead in the middle of a work night — but even odder falling back, 1:58, 1:59, 1:00, 1:01… I also find myself thinking of that great episode of “The Adventures of Pete and Pete” — starring Hampshire College alumnus Danny Tamberelli — in which time travel is possible during the shifting hour.
But over the past few years I’ve often felt “unstuck in time”. I used to be very time-aware. When I was a kid I was fascinated by watches and clocks, and I read a lot about time. My seventh-grade science fair project (for which I have a Second Prize plaque somewhere) was about time. When I was trying to learn to play an instrument, I was told I had a great sense of rhythm, almost like I had an internal metronome. (Unfortunately, that sense of rhythm never conveyed to the dance floor.) I was like John Cleese in that John Cleese movie I never saw. In fact, my sense of time was so accurate that sometimes, without having seen a clock for hours, I would guess the time and usually be accurate within 10 minutes.
That all began to change about seven years ago, when I started my night job. My sleep patterns have never been normal since, and when I shifted from a Monday to Friday schedule to a Wednesday to Sunday one, it got even odder. I have the experience of waking up, glancing at the clock, and not knowing if it is A.M. or P.M. When I think of what day of the week it is, I can be off by several days. Sometimes I even briefly forget what month it is.
This strange timelessness has been exacerbated by the stability in my life. I have been in the same job and same house for 6 1/2 years, and for 4 1/2 of those years I have been a father. My days are great but mostly similar, and time speeds by unnoticed. Sometimes I think of an event that seems like it was a few months ago, and then remember it was three or four years ago.
It’s probably no surprise that I don’t even own a working watch anymore.
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It is Daylight Saving Time, not ‘Savings’. Since you are a write, I would assume you could get it right.
Hey Tom, you are right as well as write in so far as the usage goes. Don’t know whether or not you had a chance to check out my more recent post on the topic
tell me why day light savings invented tell me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
tell me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
tell me!!!!!!!!!!
s000z, why did you not critique Tom’s writing as he did yours? You are a writer not a ‘write’ no? If you are just being the bigger person I applaude you, but I also hate or extremely dislike, whatever you prefer, those who criticize anothers writing only to make a huge gaff in their own. (crap did I just make a mistake in here somewhere?) lol
@s000z @Tom - I guess I was more interested in the grammar than I was in Tom. If that makes be a bigger person then I’m a bigger person, I guess. FYI: the grammatical glitch was later discussed in its greater context. http://www.susannaspeier.com/science/daylight-savings-time-optimized/
At any rate, thanks for kicking Tom –I mean– kicking in;-)