When it comes to giving credit where credit is due, Daylight Savings Time is less like the flashing yellow left-hand turn indicator [1] or the plug converter [2], both of which are amazing innovations, and more like the vuvuzela [3], which is irritating and annoying but also impossible to ignore. In a recent poll for Rasmussen, only 37% of Americans thought that Daylight Savings Time was worth it, and 45% of Americans do not, while 19% of Americans are not sure [4]. Count me among those who do not think that Daylight Savings Time is worthwhile. Nonetheless, as Daylight Savings Time is a fact of life in most of the United States, it is worthwhile to examine its history and rationale for existence, since it cannot be avoided.
It is unclear just what benefits Daylight Savings Time provides. Those who support and endorse the use of daylight savings time claim there are energy savings by tampering with the clocks, and that there are benefits to the socialization of children in the extra light hours of the evening and greater tourism expenditures. Others point to supposed gains in safety on the road due to fewer accidents in the evening, but there are studies that show contrary findings to these claims as well [5]. It would appear that the biggest appeal of Daylight Savings Time is monetary in nature, the supposed increase in spending and commercial activity that comes from having extra daylight in the evening, without caring much at all about the level of light in the morning, or for the torturous way that people have to adapt themselves to shifts in time twice during the course of a year.
The concept of Daylight Savings Time in some fashion is not a new one. Many ancient civilizations, varied their schedules based on the sun, and it may be connected to the same sort of solar focus as is present in our solar years, given the similar Roman interest in having variable time based on the length of the sun. Benjamin Franklin wrote an essay in 1784 that advocated waking up earlier in the summers to take advantage of morning light in order to reduce the use of candles. The idea did not catch on at the time, and it was not until the end of the 19th century when the idea of time shifts gained greater popularity. In 1895, a New Zealander named George Vernon Hudson proposed a two-hour shift in March and October, but the idea was not implemented. Ten years later, a Brit named William Willett proposed a gradually phased shift over four weeks in March and October to capture more evening daylight in the summertime, but the idea was not implemented in the form we know today during his liftime, as he died in 1915 [6].
Interestingly enough, Daylight Savings Time did not gain currency in much of the Western Hemisphere until wartime. During World War I and World War II (and, of course, in the basically permanent war footing that has existed in the United States since World War II), Daylight Savings Time was adopted in an attempt to save energy usage at night given the rationing that occurs during wartime [6]. We therefore might connect, if we are inclined to do so, the problem of militarism and a focus on the sun with the tampering of time for commercial purposes. All of these issues are interconnected–warfare drives up the scarcity of energy supplies, and the desire to save energy costs in artificial light and increse commerce leads people to change the time of day to make evenings more light and mornings more dark, rather than to shift one’s schedule gradually and naturally with the light. Because we want time to be constant, we shift the clocks rather than shifting ourselves and our own behavior.
Whether you are for or against Daylight Savings Time, it is important to understand what it means and why it is used. Commerce, a focus on energy savings resulting from shortages that come from militarism, and other reasons that often appear simply made up to add to the justification and to make it seem less callous and commercialistic. Those who are of a particularly modern mindset that seems sadly enslaved to the clock think that the changing daylight over the course of the year means that the clocks have to shift to match the light, rather than shifting our behavior in response to the light. We do not work until sunsset, but rather we work until 5PM. If it is dark when we start or stop work, we depend on artificial light. If there are hours left of daylight, then we go and enjoy our own personal business after work hours are done. Naturally, many of us prefer to have hours after work to conduct business, given that most of us (myself included) are disinclined to wake up earlier than we have to. Therefore, even if Daylight Savings Time is really a waste, and a practice full of ulterior motives on the part of authorities, it is at least understandable why we want extra time in the evening, even if there are alternate ways of doing it.
[3] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/giving-credit-where-credit-is-due-the-vuvuzela/
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