[78-L] Does anybody really know what time it is? ^

David Lennick dlennick at sympatico.ca
Sun Oct 26 17:14:20 PDT 2008


Some hilarious comments here (even if they do contribute to the feeling that 
the internet never should have been made accessible to every moron with the 
coin to pay for dial-up).
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/posted/archive/2007/10/26/hand-off-the-clock-it-s-still-daylight-saving-time.aspx

And the sun rises because Chanticleer crows and wakes it up. I read it in a book.

dl

William A Brent wrote:
> At 11:31 AM 10/26/2008, you wrote:
>> Why *do* we have daylight saving time again??
> 
> 
> William Willett conceived DST in 1905 during a pre-breakfast ride, 
> when he observed with dismay how many Londoners slept through a large 
> part of a summer day. An avid golfer, he also disliked cutting short 
> his round at dusk. His solution was to advance the clock during the 
> summer months, a proposal he published two years later. He lobbied 
> unsuccessfully for the proposal until his death in 1915
> 
> In the U.S. Andrew Peters introduced a DST bill to the U.S. House in 
> May 1909, but it soon died in committee.
> Retailers generally favor DST. United Cigar Stores hailed a 1918 DST 
> bill. During World War I DST was promoted as a way to alleviate 
> hardships from wartime coal shortages and air raid blackouts. U.S. 
> retailing and manufacturing interests led by Pittsburgh industrialist 
> Robert Garland soon began lobbying for DST, but were opposed by 
> railroads. The U.S.'s 1917 entry to the war overcame objections, and 
> DST was established in 1918.
> 
> Farmers dislike DST, and many countries repealed it after the war. 
> Britain retained DST nationwide but over the years adjusted 
> transition dates.  The U.S. Congress repealed DST after 1919. 
> President Woodrow Wilson, like Willett an avid golfer, vetoed the 
> repeal twice but his second veto was overridden, but a few U.S. 
> cities retained DST locally. First American half-cast president, 
> Warren G. Harding, opposed DST as a "deception". Reasoning that 
> people should instead get up and go to work earlier in the summer, he 
> ordered District of Columbia federal employees to start work at 08:00 
> rather than 09:00 during summer 1922. He died in office.
> 
> 
> Studies done in the 1970s by the U.S. Department of Transportation 
> show that we trim the entire country's electricity usage by about one 
> percent EACH DAY with Daylight Saving Time.
> 
> Daylight Saving Time "makes" the sun "set" one hour later and 
> therefore reduces the period between sunset and bedtime by one hour. 
> This means that less electricity would be used for lighting and 
> appliances late in the day. We may use a bit more electricity in the 
> morning because it is darker when we rise, but that is usually offset 
> by the energy savings in the evening
> 



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