Saving Daylight

Yesterday began the turning ahead of our clocks one hour for daylight savings time. Last week, we messed with the calendar, this week the clocks. All for the sake of . . . I don’t rightly know. Both seem to be acts of whimsy. Leap year, the act of adding an extra day to the calendar, was the brainchild of Julias Caesar. He was so enamored with the Egyptian solar calendar, in 46 B.C., he adopted it as a model for the Julian calendar, with a slight twist, the extra day . . . or month, to make up for missed intercalations. In the 16th century, scholars figured out Caesar was still off by about 11 minutes for a truly accurate solar calendar. How’s that for a mind altering tidbit to chew on. Yet, the Gregorian calendar we now use includes the extra day every four years to make up those 11 minutes. But still, every three thousand and thirty years, the Gregorian calendar is off by a day. I won’t sleep tonight knowing this.

Daylight savings time was first introduced at Thunder Bay in Canada in 1908!

For more inane trifling, daylight savings time is on equal footing as far as I’m concerned. It was first introduced at Thunder Bay in Canada in 1908. Those folks decided the winter days were much too short, and to maximize sunlight during spring, summer, and fall, they implemented the changing of the clocks. It makes sense that residents wouldn’t want the sun to rise after 8:00am and set by 4:00pm. The Canadians were the lone wolfs of time for the next 8 years until Germany, and France immediately after, instituted daylight savings time during World War I as an energy conservation measure. More sunlight, less energy used they reasoned. The U.S. got on board in 1918. Studies have shown that energy usage is unaffected. Another score when politicians try to be scientists. Benjamin Franklin, who some have thought to originally came up with the daylight savings time idea in 1784, did so as a joke so the French could conserve candles. Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Uniform Time Act of 1966 into law which allowed states to decide for themselves if they want daylight savings time. Only Hawaii and most of Arizona eschewed the notion. People continue to lament the hour sleep lost when the clocks are set ahead. Instead of bitching about it, why not go to bed an hour earlier, or stay in bed an hour later. It’s one less hour I lose thinking about the calendar being off by a day every three thousand and thirty years.