Dear Action Line,
Whelp, another time change to daylight savings time, another bleary-eyed late-for-work day on Monday. Why on earth do we need to do this time change thing, I hate it. And the experts all say it would be better for our health if we didn’t change the clocks twice a year, especially if we stuck with standard time so that the sun is highest at noon.
– Sign me, Ticked-Off Time Traveler
Dear Ticked Off,
This time of year I seem to be about the only one who’s glad we have the time change. But, I think it’s like the Churchill quote about democracy – it’s the worst possible system except for all the others that have been tried.
Yeah, we could stay on standard time, but then it’d be getting dark at dinner time still in the summer. Or stay on daylight saving time and have it still be dark during our second morning cup of coffee at work in winter.
It’s always easy to complain about the way things currently are, but the complaints would be worse if we didn’t change the clocks. In fact, we’ve tried this before – we implemented year-round daylight saving time from January 1974 to April 1975 to save energy during an oil crisis. The Experimental Daylight Saving Time Act of 1973 proved highly unpopular because of children going to school in the dark and other reasons (see above), and after it was shown that we didn’t really save much energy. A national survey before that experiment found 79% supported the change; after a year into it support was at 42%, and Congress voted to go back to time changes. A similar experiment happened during World War II. Isn’t travel to other time zones worth the jet lag? Sure it is – same with the time change. Granted, there do seem to be health dangers from interrupted sleep cycles, but it’s dangerous to drive cars to go hiking or to take the kids to go see the grandparents, too.
I will agree with you about what we call it. You wrote “daylight savings,” with an “s,” which is how most people say it despite its official name being “daylight saving time,” singular. Pedantic folks like to insist on the official name, pointing out we are “saving” daylight from early morning to evening, but I think you can just as easily say we are making a “savings” of daylight from morning til evening. The latter is just the noun version of the former verb form, so there’s really no difference, and “daylight savings” just sounds better. So enjoy your savings, and spend it on an after-dinner walk in the sunlight to go get some ice cream!
Email questions and suggestions to actionline@durangoherald.com or mail them to Action Line, The Durango Herald, 1275 Main Ave., Durango, CO 81301. Today’s Fun Fact: Time zones are a relatively new concept, as during most of human history, localities kept their own time with noon established when the sun was highest in the sky – sun dial time. In 1675, Greenwich Mean Time was established so mariners could have a means to establish their longitude by comparing their own high-noon time with the time in Greenwich, England (although it took some time and a worldwide contest to develop clocks that could keep these times accurately over the course of weeks and months on a ship). Time zones weren’t established until the age of railroads in the 1800s, when travel speeds increased and time zones were necessary to keep the trains running “on time.”
