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:
|
