Vox Nova at the Library: Seize the Daylight
Conservatives are often accused of wanting to “turn back the clock.” Yet as David Prerau notes in his book Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time, when Americans actually do turn back their clocks this weekend in observance of Daylight Saving Time, they’ll have to thank not some archconservative or reactionary, but rather an early 20th century progressive reformer. 
It was just over 100 years ago, on a summer morning in 1905, that William Willett thought up the idea while riding through the English countryside. Willett thought it a pity that so many people were “wasting daylight” by sleeping in, and hit upon the idea that by having everyone set their clocks ahead one hour, he could get people to enjoy more hours of daylight after they had finished work (Willett’s plan was on this point at least less intrusive than the plan satirically proposed by Benjamin “Early to be and Early to rise” Franklin to deal with the same problem, which was to set off canons shortly after dawn).
At first Willett’s plan was greeted with mockery and derision. One member of the House of Commons sarcastically suggested that people should likewise relabel thermometers in the winter to keep it from being so cold. When Germany adopted the practice during World War I as an energy saving mechanism, however, both England and the United States felt constrained to follow suit.
Daylight Saving Time (or, as it is derisively called, Daylight Savings Time) was hugely unpopular in the United States. Farmers didn’t like it because their crops and livestock didn’t follow it, while their customers did. Some protestant churchmen considered it a blasphemous deviation from “God’s time” (which was, in actually, set by the railroad companies in the late 19th century as a means of standardizing train schedules). The Movie industry didn’t like it because people it kept people out of the theaters. And the alleged energy savings claimed on behalf of DST were never quite able to be proved. In 1919, the Daylight Saving law was enthusiastically repealed, and DST might have died out in the U.S. altogether, were it not for what many might call Wall Street greed.
You see, London is six hours ahead of New York, which meant that the London and New York Stock Exchanges were only in simultaneous operation for one hour a day. London, however, was still observing DST, and when the London clocks moved an hour ahead each Spring, this cut off any overlap between the two exchanges. This, in turn, cut off many a financial opportunity, the nature of which is beyond me, yet nonetheless very real. For this reason, The New York Stock Exchange soon announced that it would be observing DST even if the rest of the country did not. Because of the confusion caused by having two different time settings in one city, the rest of NYC soon followed suit. And from there, DST slowly spread across the country, and more and more locales found it easier to deal with places that had already adopted DST if they adopted it themselves. Today, only mavricky Arizona does not observe Daylight Saving Time.
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I always wondered where day light savings time came from. Thanks for sharing this.
Today, only mavricky Arizona does not observe Daylight Saving Time.
I believe Hawaii doesn’t observe it either.
yeah. Hawaii doesn’t observe it either.
Shoot. You’re right. Missed Hawaii.
Curiously, why is this such an issue for folks? This is like a seasonal experience on conservative blogs as folks complain about this “problem.” It tells me it is fall in the US. And spring.
Kind of like the “battle to keep Christ in Xmas” fought every December. (Which I can’t wait for…)
What’s with this issue and the angst it produces with conservatives?
Possibly because Noon is that point at which the sun reaches its zenith in the sky each day. We’ve already manipulated this reality with standardisation of time zones, and then further manipulate this reality with “daylight savings”. Both are accomadations, fictions, meant to improve the efficiency of business, and therefore, increase moneymaking
The interesting question is why those Daniel Conway would not label as “conservative” have no problem with the manipulation of reality in pursuit of filthy lucre?
A small correction, this past weekend we turned out clock back to Standard Time. Daylight time is what is observed in the summer.
My issue with daylight time is that it is a lie. It is a violation of the commandment not to bear false witness for no good reason whatsoever. If business want to observe different hours in the summertime, that may well be a good thing, but they should be able to make that decision for themselves.
My issue with daylight time is that it is a lie. It is a violation of the commandment not to bear false witness for no good reason whatsoever.
You’re joking, right?
No, I’m not kidding.
Daylight time is a lie.
Clocks are instruments that tell us the position of the Sun when it is not visible. That is in the fundamental sense what a clock is. Now standardized time zones change this, they render clocks instruments that tell us the position of the Sun in the center of the time zone, which is a reasonable accomodation that facilitates commerce.
However, Daylight time renders the clock into a different kind of thing. Instead of being a divice that tells us about the movements of the Sun, the clock becomes instead a device that merely tracks a sequence of time units. The terms a.m. and p.m. become totally meaningless in daylight time, because the clock does not reference the position of the Sun in relation to the meridian in daylight time.
The way we use language is important. Getting people to believe a lie about time makes it easier to get them to believe other lies, such as: a fetus is not a person, but only a potential person. Truth is important in all areas, even this one.
Clocks are instruments that tell us the position of the Sun when it is not visible. That is in the fundamental sense what a clock is.
Not really, no. The purpose of a clock is to tell time. It’s a mechanism that helps us coordinate human activities. In ages past, the best way to tell time was by the position of the sun, and so the position of the sun was often used as a rough time keeping device. It wasn’t a very precise device, however, and so clocks and other time keeping devices were invented (if the purpose of a clock is to tell us the position of the Sun when it is not visible, then the guys who came up with sun dials must have been some real idiots, since a sun dial will only function when the sun is out and its position is readily ascertainable; hourglasses would likewise seem pretty useless).
Seriously, one might as well argue that a compass is a lie, since the purpose of a compass is to tell us the position of the North Pole, but a compass actually points towards Magnetic North, and not towards True North.
BA,
The purpose of a clock is to tell time, yes, but time is the position of the Sun in the sky, not the succession of arbitrary units.
The passage of time is not arbitrary. the hour is tied to the movement of the sun as surely as the day or the year are. Imagine if someone were to propose day saving time by removing 1/7th of each day so that by the end of the week we could have a whole extra day, this would be great for productivity! one could work 6 shifts and still have a 2 day weekend!
How absurd would it be to have dawn in the afternoon a few days a week? I trust peple could see how this would violate the natural order of the day in night establish by the movement of the Sun through the sky. Daylight saving time is different only in degree from such absurdities, but not in kind. God gives order to our day by the movement of the Sun through the sky. It is His reason that structures the hours, not ours.
Those protestant churchmen were right. Daylight savings time is different than God’s time.
when Americans actually do turn back their clocks this weekend in observance of Daylight Saving Time, they’ll have to thank not some archconservative or reactionary, but rather an early 20th century progressive reformer.
Well, “archconservatives” and “reactionaries” are generally opposed or at best indifferent to DST, but why would anyone actually want to thank someone for it? It is, and has always been, a transparent ploy by certain retail interests to increase their profits. Farmers generally hate it, as they’d prefer the “extra hour” in the morning to dry the dew. It has long been thought to increase traffic accidents in periods just after the time change, and just recently there’s a study that suggests it changes risk for heart attack: A period of three days of increased risk in the spring, with only one day of decreased risk in the fall. So, while I’m pretty indifferent myself to it, I’ll sure as hell not trouble myself to “thank” the idiot who thought it up.