Ben Franklin and Daylight Saving Time: Even Homer Nods

"Daylight-saving time? Ben Franklin's bright idea"
Dana Angello, The Huntsville Item, (November 7, 2010)

"This is the time of year when we become painfully aware of how many clocks are in our homes, a product of daylight-saving time and the process of adjusting our clocks to 'fall' back one hour.

"There's one on the microwave, oven, coffee maker, computers, televisions, and an alarm clock in each bedroom. The list seems to go on forever. And each year we ask ourselves, 'Who came up with this idea? Is this really necessary?'

"As it turns out, daylight-saving time was first introduced to the world by Benjamin Franklin. In his essay 'The Economic Project,' which he wrote during his time in Paris, he complained of being awoken by the early morning sun and decided he had a logical remedy. By simply moving the clocks one hour forward he would not only be permitted to sleep later, but he also calculated that the Parisians would save 'an immense sum' of candle wax by postponing sundown.

"Franklin's idea fell on deaf ears for more than a century, until British builder William Willett successfully proposed Daylight Saving Time to Parliament after coming to the disappointing realization that the British were 'wasting daylight' by not waking up until after the sun had risen. Parliament eventually passed a law requiring the British to “spring” their clocks forward in April and then 'fall back' in the winter.

"Americans adopted the idea in 1918, hoping to bask in the sunshine, while also embracing Franklin's practical concern of energy conservation. In fact, during World War II, a year-round daylight-saving plan, 'War Time,' was put into place in an effort to decrease fuel consumption...."

The Lemming thinks Benjamin Franklin had quite a few good ideas: from the Franklin stove to bifocals. Daylight Saving Time? Two centuries back, it might have saved a lot of candle wax. Today? Well, a few things have changed since the days of the powdered wig.

Ah! But think of all the electricity we'll save! The Energy Information Administration says that the United States uses about 13.4% of its electricity for lighting. That's not a negligible percentage: but it's not particularly huge, either.

Besides: Most offices I've worked in used electrical lighting during the day. They had to: there weren't that many work stations near a window. I suppose we could have used candles.

Dana Angello's article traces Daylight Saving time, American style, back to 1918, the year WW I ended. The Lemming's suspected that the American Congress wanted to 'do something' to justify its existence - but I won't insist on the idea.

Anyway, we're stuck with twice-yearly jet lag and the hassle of resetting clocks - all for the sake of saving some fraction of the small percentage of electrical power that's used for lighting.

Or maybe it's to conserve candle wax.

Related posts:

• "Lemming Tracks: The Lemming's Taking the Weekend Off"
  (April 10, 2010)
• "I'm Blaming Daylight Saving Time: or, Not"
  Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (March 17, 2010)
• "The French Revolution's Calendar: It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time"
  (September 22, 2009)
• "Daylight Saving Time Strikes Again"
  (March 8, 2009)
• "Daylight Saving Time, Again: Get Ready for Mandatory Jet Lag"
  (February 23, 2009)
• "Daylight Saving Time: A Modest Proposal"
  (October 26, 2008)

---

A serious look at energy statistics:

• "Frequently Asked Questions – Electricity"
  EIA Energy Information Administration

Lemming Tracks: The Lemming's Taking the Weekend Off

The Lemming's been a bit frazzled lately. I live in America, April 15 is coming up, and - the Lemming wrote about this before. (Lemming Tracks: Tax Time Surprise, March 22, 2010)

I Could Use a Break: So I'm Taking One

So, I'm taking the weekend off. Pretty much, anyway. For this blog, Apathetic Lemming of the North, that means that you can expect the next post somewhere in the late afternoon of Monday, April 12. Central Time, that is. That's UTC minus six hours - except when the American government is yanking us around, temporally.

The Lemming's written about that, too:

• "I'm Blaming Daylight Saving Time: or, Not"
  Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (March 17, 2010)
• "Daylight Saving Time, Again: Get Ready for Mandatory Jet Lag"
  (February 23, 2009)
• "Daylight Saving Time: A Modest Proposal"
  (October 26, 2008)
• "Daylight Saving Time Strikes Again"
  (March 8, 2009)

Don't get me wrong: as I wrote in Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space, I think Daylight Saving Time may have made a little sense. Sort of. 90 years ago. Now, not so much.

But I suppose it could be worse:

• "The French Revolution's Calendar: It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time"
  (September 22, 2009)

Good grief: I've wandered far off-topic. Time to call it a day (Saturday, specifically). The sky is shining and the sun is blue - or rather, the other way around - and it's time for the Lemming to get some R & R. See you again, late Monday.

The French Revolution's Calendar: It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

"Sept. 22, 1792: Day 1 of Revolutionary Calendar"
This Day in Tech, Wired (September 21, 2009)

"1792: It's 1 Vendémiaire of An I in the French Revolutionary Calendar, the first day of the first month of the first year of the First Republic of France. It’s the day the National Convention proclaimed France a republic, but no one would know about the new system of marking time for another year, when the calendar was imposed retroactively.

"When people who study the French Revolution read about the Uprising of Vendémiaire or the Insurrection of 12 Germinal An III, most simply scratch their heads and wonder, Vendémiaire? Germinal? An III? What's that all about?

"Few ever bother to learn what these dates mean. In fact, they are part of the French Republican Calendar, aka Revolutionary Calendar, which replaced the Gregorian Calendar in France from 1793 to 1805...."

We got quite a bit out of the French Revolution: the metric system of measurement; demonstrations that the guillotine was useful for whacking off heads in wholesale lots; and a career-changing opportunity for a Corsican whose name provided psychologists with the catchy name, "Napoleon complex."

Ah, those were heady years.

It must have seemed such a good idea at the time. All the revolutionaries did was:

• Overthrow the king
  • Happened all the time in Europe's feudal period
• Break into churches
  • Hardly a new idea - this was the late 1700s
• Smash religious statues
  • It'd worked so well for the Lord Protector, about a century before
• Put a nattily-dressed serious thinker who said terror was a virtue necessary to maintaining the state in charge of the whole blowout

Hey, what could possibly go wrong?

Anyway, the Wired article gives chapter and verse of a new-and-improved calendar (now without those horrid religious holidays!). That lasted a lot longer than many enemies of the state did.

Eventually, France pulled itself back together - with help from that Corsican I mentioned - and went back to using that boring old Gregorian calendar.

One of the features that appealed to me in the 'revolutionary' calendar was putting the start of the year at a logical point in the annual cycle: at the autumnal equinox.

That's a nifty feature. Although if it had caught on, the new calendar wouldn't have stayed in line with Earth's equinoxes. Precession and all that, you know.

The calendar had 12 months of 30 days each. I know: That left them five days short. The slack was taken up by five festivals: one each for Virtue, Genius, Labor, Opinion and Rewards. Groovy.

You Think Daylight Saving Time is Bad? Try Metric Days

Finally:

"...Revolutionaries even attempted a metric day of 10 hours of 100 minutes each of 100 seconds each. With 100,000 seconds per day, this metric second was about 14 percent shorter than the one we know, of which 86,400 make a complete day...."

Daylight Saving Time Strikes Again

We went through stationary jet lag again, as mandated.

It's called "Daylight Saving Time," and I posted about it recently: "Daylight Saving Time, Again: Get Ready for Mandatory Jet Lag" (February 23, 2009)

Last year, I came up with "Daylight Saving Time: A Modest Proposal " (October 26, 2008). (With a tip of the hat to Jonathan Swift, and his politico/religious satire, "A Modest Proposal."

As we say in Minnesota, "it could be worse."

Daylight Saving Time, Again: Get Ready for Mandatory Jet Lag

I suppose that Daylight Saving Time fights global warming, saves the fur seal, protects the spotted owl, or something like that: but it feels like jet lag. And, twice a year, people around the world have to put up with it.

Daylight Saving Time: Since We Must

You can't fight city hall, much less a national government, so, here's a handy guide for citizens of Earth. It may make your biannual headache a little more bearable.

"Upcoming clock changes"

"The following list displays locations that will change their clocks during the next 4 weeks. Click on the location link in order to see more information about the change...."

This looks like a handy one-stop resource for discovering the specific pointless annoyance your government is forcing on you, whether you live in Uruguay (setting your clocks back an hour) , Canada (setting your clocks forward an hour), or Chile (back an hour). It seems to be a hemispheric thing. At least there's some consistency: "Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't."

I'm an American, so in the wee hours of March 9, 2009, I'm supposed to set my clocks ahead by one hour. Daring rebel that I am, though, I'm actually going to set them forward late in the evening on March 8, 2009.

My computer, however, which is not a scofflaw, will be a good citizen and make the change at the proper, legal, and mandatory, hour.

Daylight Saving Time: It Could be Worse

Around the time of the last exercise in governmental chain-yanking, I posted more informational links, as well as a little suggestion about how Daylight Saving Time could be, ah, improved:

"Daylight Saving Time: A Modest Proposal "
(October 26, 2008)

(With a tip of the hat to Jonathan Swift, and his politico/religious satire, "A Modest Proposal."

Daylight Saving Time: A Modest Proposal

This post is mostly for Americans, who have a Congress to tell them how to set their clocks.

Remember the old-fashioned Daylight Saving Time?

Remember when Congress decided to improve it, back in August of 2005?

First, Some Links

• Daylight Saving Time, according to Infoplease.com
  "Daylight Saving Time"
  "A trip around the world reveals that time isn't a synchronized science"
• Daylight Saving Time, Standard Time: an official FAQ:
  "When does Daylight Saving Time/Standard Time begin? "
  National Institute of Standards and Technology
• Daylight Saving Time fact sheet for students:
  "CNN Student News One-Sheet: Daylight-Saving Time"
  CNN (March 7, 2008)
• Daylight Saving Time in the news:
  "Don't turn your clocks back yet"
  Chicago Daily News / Chicago Tribune (October 26, 2008)

Daylight Saving Time's Undervalued Bonus

It's that time of year again. For the benefit of those who can't afford airline tickets, Congress has provided America with Daylight Saving Time: thus bringing jet lag to the masses, twice a year.

I've read that having our sleeping schedules yanked around twice a year saves energy. That could be.

Daylight Saving Time: It Could Be Worse

In March, 2007, I realized that America's national leaders had failed to grasp the full potential of legislated time changes. Daylight Saving Time could be only the start of a wonderfully intricate time table, if Congress had but the imagination.

Here's what I proposed, about a year and a half ago:

Inspired by the sort of thinking that gave us daylight saving time, and now new-and-improved DST, here are three more ways that changing the clock (and, while we're at it, the calendar) could change our quality of life.

• Set clocks back 12 hours during August
  • Keeping people quiet during the day could save enormous amounts of energy that would otherwise be wasted on air conditioning in stores and offices
• Set clocks back ten hours and forty minutes at noon on April 15
  • This 10:40 time shift would
    • Remind those who wait until the last minute to file tax returns of the date
    • Give them more than a full business-day's-worth of additional time to get their forms in
  • Ten hours and forty minutes is a large time shift, so clocks should be set forward one hour and twenty minutes at 2:00 a.m.
    • For eight days
      • April 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15
    • To minimize psychological stress
  • Although this stress-relieving measure might not save significant amounts of energy, the psychological effects could make a significant difference in quality of life
• Finally, replace the evening of December 31 with Substance Abuse and Drug Interaction Study Time
  • Instead of over-indulging during New Year's Eve parties, citizens would be encouraged to learn about
    • Substance abuse
    • Dangers of mixing prescription drugs and alcohol
  • This should
    • Reduce deaths in drunk-driving accidents
    • Alleviate the need for expensive security measures in places like New York's Times Square
    • Promote sober, healthy lifestyles among the general public

Considering the sort of daft rules Congress could be foisting on us, maybe being jerked back and forth by an hour isn't so bad.

As we say in Minnesota, it could be worse.