100 years later, the madness of the hour of the day continues

One hundred years after the adoption by Congress of the first law on the daylight saving time, more and more people are doubting the wisdom of changing the clocks.

In August, the European Commission proposed to end the half-yearly practice.

Last winter, Florida lawmakers enacted the "Sunshine Protection Act," which will make summer time a reality year-round in the Sunshine State.

If approved by the federal government, Florida residents will move one time east, lining the cities from Jacksonville to Miami over Nova Scotia rather than New York and Washington, D.C.

The cost of rescheduling international and interstate business activities has not been calculated. Rather than rely on the same overly optimistic calculations that have propelled daylight saving proponents to predict vast sun savings in our lives. "

It is absurd – and appropriate – that a century later, opponents and supporters of daylight saving time still do not know exactly what it is doing. Despite its name, Daylight Saving Time has never saved anything. But it has proven to be an extremely effective driver of retail spending.

Roll trains at the hour

For centuries, people set their clocks and watches looking up at the sun and making estimates, which gave extremely different results between cities (and often within them).

For the railways around the world, that was not acceptable. They needed synchronous and predictable hours for their arrivals and departures. They proposed to split the globe into 24 time zones.

In 1883, the economic weight of the railways enabled them to replace the weather of the sun with standard time without legislative assistance and little opposition from the public. The clocks have remained quiet for nearly 30 years, aside from an annual debate in the UK Parliament on the desirability of adopting a Daylight Saving Act. While proponents argued that moving the clocks forward during the summer months would reduce energy consumption and encourage outdoor activities, the opposition won.

Then, in 1916, Germany suddenly adopted the British idea in the hope of conserving the energy necessary for its war effort. In one year, Britain followed suit. And despite the fanatical opposition of the agricultural lobby, so would the United States.

From patriotic duty to monetary stratagem

A law forcing Americans to lose an hour was pretty disconcerting. But Congress also addressed the legal mandate of the four continental time zones. The patriotic rationale for daylight saving time was that moving an hour of light early in the morning (when most Americans slept) would reduce the demand for household electrical energy used to light homes in the evening, which would further save money. War effort.

On March 19, 1918, Woodrow Wilson signed the Calder Act demanding that Americans set their clocks on normal time; less than two weeks later, on March 31, they would be forced to abandon the standard time and advance their clocks by one hour for the first daylight saving time of the country.

It did not go well. In 1918, Easter Sunday fell on March 31, which resulted in many latecomers in religious services. Enraged rural and evangelical opponents then blamed the late hour for deregulating the time of the sun, or "God's time". Unusual golden lawns with as much daylight.

In one year, the late hour has been repealed. But like most weeds, the practice has flourished through neglect.

In 1920, New York and dozens of other cities adopted their own metropolitan day economy policy. The Chamber of Commerce encouraged this movement on behalf of the department store owners, who had noticed that the sunset was causing more and more people to take a break and shop around to get home after work.

In 1965, 18 states observed the summer time six months a year; some cities and towns of 18 other states have observed summer time four, five or six months a year; and 12 states pasted at the normal time.

It was not exactly ideal. A 35-mile bus ride from Steubenville (Ohio) to Moundsville (West Virginia) crossed seven distinct time zones. The US naval observatory has called the world's largest superpower "the worst timekeeper in the world".

Thus, in 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which provided for six months of standard time and six days of daylight saving time.

Ideal for golf – but what about others?

Why are we doing it again?

Today, we know that clock change influences our behavior. For example, sunset time has significantly increased participation in after-school sport programs and participation in professional sporting events. In 1920, the Washington Post reported that sales of golf balls in 1918 – the first day of daylight savings time – had increased by 20%.

And when Congress extended daylight savings time from six to seven months in 1986, the golf industry estimated that an additional month could be worth up to $ 400 million in additional equipment sales and fees. greening. To this day, Nielsen's ratings even for the most popular TV shows are dropping steeply when we get up from the front because we are going out to enjoy the sun.

But the promised energy savings – the justification presented for politics – never materialized.

In fact, the best studies we have show that Americans use more domestic electricity when they go to daylight saving time. In addition, when we turn off the television and go to the park or mall in the evening sun, the Americans do not walk. We get in our cars and drive. Summertime actually increases gasoline consumption and is a misleading substitute for a true energy saving policy.

Lawmakers in Florida, from all over the world, should know that the summer economy is not a brilliant idea, especially in December and January, when most people in Sunshine State do not see the sunrise. sun only about 8 o'clock in the morning.

On January 8, 1974, Richard Nixon forced Floridians and the entire country to spend the summer time – a futile attempt to avoid an energy crisis and mitigate the impact of the future. 39, an oil embargo of OPEC.

But before the end of the first month of the summer time of January, eight children died in Florida road accidents, and a spokesman for the Florida Department of Education attributed six of these deaths directly to children going to school in the dark.

Lesson learned? Apparently not.

Michael Downing is a lecturer in creative writing at Tufts University. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original story here.