Time to spring forward
Editor's note: This article uses information from "Saving Time, Saving
Energy"
by Bob Aldrich, which can be found on the California Energy Commission's
website.
By CYNTHIA AUKERMAN
News-Gazette reporter
For the first time in decades, all of Union City will be on the same time,
beginning on Sunday, April 2. There will be no Indiana time or Ohio time, no
fast time, slow time or split the difference. Union City, Ind. residents will
join most other Indiana residents in springing forward to Daylight Saving Time
on April 2.
That's the first Sunday in April, but the change actually comes at 2 a.m., so
most people will want to set their clocks ahead before they go to bed Saturday
night.
This year DST lasts only six months (beginning in April and ending the last
Sunday in October), but next year DST will last even longer. Thanks to the
Energy Policy Act of 2005, DST in 2007 will last from the second Sunday in
March to the first Sunday in November.
Citizens aggravated about time changing should remember the situation could,
and has been, worse. Prior to 1883, individual cities and regions set their
clocks according to the sun, creating wide varieties in time keeping. In 1883
the railroads first standardized their schedules, bringing some order to the
time confusion.
Daylight Saving Time came into effect with the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which
did not require any jurisdiction to observe DST but mandated that any that did
use DST must do it uniformly.
Uniformity is not exactly what border towns like Union City experienced over
the decades. A family might have children who went to school on "slow" time,
a father who worked on "fast" time, and a mother whose work started a half
hour earlier or later than the rest of the year in an attempt to "split the
difference." And nobody knew for sure without asking what time their doctor's
appointment or meeting was going to be.
Maybe we should blame all these years of time confusion on Benjamin Franklin.
While he was serving as the American minister to France, he also enjoyed the
company of beautiful women AND came up with an essay titled "An Economical
Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light." It was published in Paris in
1784.
Not much came of Old Ben's theory until an Englishman, William Willett,
suggested daylight saving time in 1907. If Willett's proposal had been
accepted, border town sufferers from time confusion would have seen their
ranks greatly multiplied.
Willett proposed moving the clock ahead by 80 minutes in four moves of 20
minutes each during the spring and summer months. That idea didn't fly. But
an act of Parliament in 1916 created British Summer Time, which set clocks one
hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time during the summer months.
The United States went to Daylight Saving Time in 1918 in the midst of World
War I. The law was so unpopular that it was later repealed. When the United
States went to war again, it went back to DST, and the one hour advance stayed
in effect year round until the war's end.
From 1945 to 1966, there was no law in the United States about Daylight Saving
Time. Because of different local customs and laws, radio and television
stations and the transportation companies had to publish new schedules every
time a state or town began or ended DST.
During the 1973 Arab oil embargo, Congress put most of the nation on extended
DST for two years in hopes of saving addition energy. In 1974, DST lasted for
10 months and in 1975, it lasted for eight months. Reportedly the experiment
worked, but Congress did not continue it because of opposition - mostly from
the farming states.
What did Randolph County and Indiana do in 1974 and 1975? Did its residents
spring ahead with most of the nation, or did we stay stuck in our own time
warp? A search of local newspapers might reveal the answer to that question.
Meanwhile, until I can find time - fast, slow or ordinary - to research that
question, we might ponder this timely quote from Winston Churchill: "An extra
yawn one morning in the springtime, an extra snooze one night in the autumn is
all that we ask in return for dazzling gifts. We borrow an hour one night in
April; we pay it back with golden interest five months later." In our case,
that's six or eight months later.