Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

Does anyone know what time it is? Does anyone even care?

It is time to fall back and examine a few things about time.  Goodbye, Daylight Savings Time!

For those reading this and not familiar with the American rock band, The Chicago Transit Authority, (later know as just Chicago) the opening quote is from a song written and sung by a member of the group in 1969. The group formed in 1967 in Chicago. The band is no longer together but the song lives on for me as a kid growing up in the 70s.

Who’s idea was it to change the time twice a year and why? Who knew that it was founding father, Ben Franklin was the first to conceive the idea of daylight savings time. Ben wrote a comedic letter, An Economic Project (published in 1784) jokingly suggesting the change in time in 1784 while he was a delegate in Paris.  The change was not fully realized until 1916 when certain European countries began adopting daylight saving time  (DST)

We know that daylight saving time (DST) in the United States is the practice of setting the clock forward by one hour during the warmer part of the year, so that the evenings have more daylight and morning have less.  Daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November, with the changes taking place at 2:00 a.m.

Years ago daylight savings time used to end just before Halloween. It was changed in 2007, Currently, DST begins the second Sunday in March, and ends on the first Sunday in November.

How much do you know about Daylight Savings Time ?

• The modern day version of daylight savings time was first proposed by the New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson in 1985.  The credit for the first to suggest the modern day DST system is often incorrectly given to William Willet who independently thought up and lobbied for DST in 1905.  He was riding through London one day in the early morning and noticed that a good portion of London’s population slept through several hours of the sunlight summer days. If only he’d read Franklin’s letter, inspiration might have struck sooner.  Willet lobbied for DST until his death in 1915.
• The primary reason that 2:00 in the morning was set as the changeover time in the United States:  Because lawmakers believed it was very desirable for the entire continental U.S. to have made the change by the start of the normal working day. Many computer and electronic systems now are able to make the adjustment without human intervention.
• It was the Uniform Time Act, 1966  that standardized the starting and ending dates as well as the when the change occurred, In addition, the act did not require that all areas observe DST.
• Not every state observes daylight savings time in the United States.  Hawaii and most of Arizona don’t turn their clocks ahead or back like the rest of the country, neither does American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico or the United States Virgin Islands.
• November 1883, the United States as well as Canada implemented standard time in their time zones.  This was driven by the railroads and prior to this, each locally was able to determine time in whatever fashion suited them.

I must say I do enjoy waking up to the sunlight instead of thinking that I never went to sleep because it was still dark in the morning right before the time change.  No wonder most Americans are confused about the time changes from DST back to standard time, so, does anybody really know what time it is?