Retropolis
By Michael S. RosenwaldNovember 4 at 7:00 AM
‘Termination of chaos’: How daylight saving solved America’s clock craziness
One of the crazier facts about life in America is this: For roughly two decades, nobody had any clue what time it was.
In office buildings, it could be 4 p.m. on one floor and 5 p.m. on another — an important matter for several reasons, including who punched out first to get to happy hour. People would step off airplanes with no idea how to set their watches. Ponder this head-scratcher:
“A short trip from Steubenville, Ohio, to Moundsville, West Virginia became a symbol of the deteriorating situation. A bus ride down this thirty-five-mile stretch of highway took less than an hour. But along that route, the local time changed seven times.”
That “deteriorating situation,” as historian Michael Downing put it in his book “Spring Forward,” is the reason millions of Americans will set their clocks back this weekend for Daylight Saving. (And it is daylight saving, not savings. You’re welcome.) Those who forget are going to be very early for Sunday brunch.
[It’s time to ‘fall back’ again — daylight saving time ends this weekend]
Before 1966, when President Lyndon B. Johnson solved the craziness over America’s clocks two years after passing the Civil Rights Act, time was essentially anything governments or businesses wanted it to be. Though laws mandating daylight saving — to save fuel, to give shoppers extra time in the light — passed in 1918, by the end of World War II the system had become fractured and was ultimately dismantled.
These were nutty times, Downing writes, with some localities observing daylight saving, some not:
Left to their own devices, private enterprise and local governments — which had repeatedly demanded the right not to alter their clocks — took to changing the time as often as they changed their socks, setting off a nationwide frenzy of time tampering …
Downing writes. “Motorists driving west through the 5 p.m. rush hour in Council Bluffs, Iowa, found themselves tied up in the 5 p.m. rush hour in Omaha, Nebraska, an hour later.”
The historian also offers this truly astonishing fact: “By 1963, no federal agency of commission was even attempting to keep track of timekeeping practices in the United States.”
When the government did finally get involved, a committee was, of course, established.
It was called, “The Committee for Time Uniformity.”
Congressional hearings were held. Legislation was proposed. Editorials were written.
The measure “is a bid for the termination of chaos,” this newspaper opined. To those who would oppose such a sensible idea, the Post editorial page said, “It is better for them to adjust to the will of the majority than to tolerate the Babel of contradictory clocks.”
The Uniform Time Act of 1966 — designed “to promote the observance of a uniform system of time throughout the United States” — was signed into law by Johnson on April 13, 1966.
Six months later it became the law of the land, though one wonders: Did it go into effect at the very same time in New York and Chicago, which is one hour behind?
Actually, never mind.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Comments are always fun to read,here's a few.
1 hour ago
Well, at least we do not use DECIMAL TIME (French Revolutionary Time). That would be more confusing since we are used to the 12 our day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time#France
http://mentalfloss.com/article/32127/decimal-time-how-french-made-10-hour-day
1 hour ago
There is ample reason to have uniform time. There is no valid reason to have a shift from sttandard time to DST. Just make one or the other year the "standard" year round.
1 hour ago
Daylight " Savings " Time should be abolished in my opinion. There is no real evidence that DST is " Saving " anything. In fact, the opposite may be occurring, and Day Light Savings Time is actually the cause of more power usage. Also, in this day and age, when computers are on 24/7, and cell phone charging is mostly at night, a time change is invalid.
We should all just go back to Standard Time.
1 hour ago
Great article! I knew timekeeping was chaotic before the introduction of time zones in the late 19th century, but I had no idea there was such disarray as recently as 1966.
IIRC, there was no such confusion in the Washington area. Didn't DC, MD and VA all go on and off DST at the same time?
Also, local options or no, railroads and airlines must have followed some sort of standard time policy. Railroads were the reason time zones were established in the first place, and the need wouldn't have changed 100 years later.
1 hour ago
The author of this piece conflates two separate issues.
One is the uniformity of how we set times. That was an even worse problem in the past when towns set their own clocks by noting when the sun was at its highest at _their_ location. At that point there were not four times zones — there were potentially many times that number and they might differ my some number of minutes.
Fixing that was important, it took a national initiative — and railroad travel may have been at least partly responsible for it, since setting schedules with the existing system was a nightmare.
The second issue is the one regarding daylight savings time. Yes, it is set nationally — sort of — in a roughly uniform way. But daylight savings time itself doesn't solve these problems. The uniformity — even with a system that many do not like — is what solves the issues.
1 hour ago
Another example politicians' felt need to control the environment.
But in solving one problem, they create numerous unexpected negative consequences. Narcissists are such slow learners.
47 minutes ago
Oh, how cute -- someone who doesn't understand the issues, chiming in with some insults.
But then, the Internet Research Agency, in Moscow, doesn't give their little trolls time to bone up on the actual topics that they're commenting on. They've got their Big Book o' Media Talking Points, and that's what they use.
1 hour ago
A better solution would be for everyone to use Universal Coordinated Time, which is the same right round the world and in all seasons. So long as you don't need for your hour hand to roughly indicate the sun's position, this will solve many problems. While we're at it, we ought to jettison those antique Avoirdupois units of measurement, too.
2 hours ago
Much of what we think about the issue depends on where we live. Forty years or so ago I lived in the Florida panhandle in the very eastern part of the Central time zone. Before the time changed in the spring it would be getting light shortly after 4. If it had not changed, midsummer would have been insane. I visited relatives in Texas at the very western part of the zone and the difference was extreme.
One of my children was born the night in 1974 when we went on DST in early January. No one ever did figure out what time she was actually born be a useful the delivery room clocks did not match.
2 hours ago
Sigh. No connection in the article about railroads and the creation of standard time.
2 hours ago
When I was younger I remember the clocks changed at the end of April and the beginning of October. That made a lot of sense to me, and especially those living on the eastern edges of the time zone, where the sun was coming up at 4:45 in the morning by late April. This extended DST, where it is the rule rather than the "summer exception" is the problem. DST is three months too long!
2 hours ago
There's still a lot of controversy over daylight saving time. For a full history of daylight saving time around the world, see my 400 page ebook published earlier this year, The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy.
3 hours ago
This absolute garbage of a nonsensical concept needs to be done away with. This whole baloney of having to change clocks and making our winter months even darker than they already are is pure madness. Let’s end this once and for all for god sake.
2 hours ago
The darkness that you complain about is because of standard time. Blame the sun.
3 hours ago
There is one part of the government that has known the exact time for almost 200 years: The US Navy. Longitudinal navigation depends upon a comparison of known time at fixed locations with the amount of time since sunrise on any specific given day at a different location. The US Naval Observatory has been calculating precise time since 1830, first by use of astronomical observation and now by use of atomic clocks accurate to minute fractions of a nanosecond. This accuracy of time is what enables GPS systems to function.
Now, why is it Daylight Saving Time and not Daylight Savings Time? Simply answer these two questions and you'll understand. Is the Heimlich a life savings maneuver or a life saving maneuver? Why?
3 hours ago
"Savings" is a noun; it's what you have in the bank. "Saving" is a gerund (verbal adjective) and modifies a noun. In this context it describes a category of time which supposedly saves daylight. (Although the sun is up for an equal amount of time at the same location on the same day, regardless of which system you are using.)
3 hours ago
In New Mexico, we have a legislator who keeps proposing that we stay on MDT year round. That might keep us in step with Arizona, making us an hour ahead of them throughout the year, but would create havoc with our other neighboring states--not to mention that schoolkids will be waiting for buses in the dark in the winter. Fortunately, he keeps getting voted down. Now, I do object to how DST was extended by a week or so on either end back in the 2000s.
2 hours ago
When I lived in Anchorage my children walked a mile to school in the dark. We gave then flash light. Children can cope. If people want more day light they can adjust their schedules or their latitude. Period.
2 hours ago
Halloween is during Daylight Saving Time. This leaves a little more daylight to trick-or-treat.
3 hours ago
Wow! I am a pretty aware guy and was even as a kid. I was in my teens during the 1960s, well read and politically active, and somehow the entire "time chaos" drama managed to unfold without me even noticing? Thank God for New England!
3 hours ago
(Edited)
For those who wish to go back to pre-1966 time, tell trump Obama signed The Uniform Time Act of 1966, then he will sign a proclamation cancelling The Uniform Time Act of 1966 !!!
3 hours ago
(Edited)
To get from Council Bluffs Iowa to Omaha Nebraska requires simply driving across a bridge. It doesn't take an hour; it takes about 10 minutes, once you get to the bridge. Plus, both cities are in the Central Time Zone.
3 hours ago
I'm trying to imagine what a rush hour in Council Bluffs would even look like... ;-)
4 hours ago
Whether or not you favor the Daylight Saving Time concept, there are some logical inconsistencies to the schedule. Daylight Saving Time starts about 8 days before the Spring Equinox, but ends some 40 days after the Fall Equinox. If the start of Daylight Saving was symmetrical with the end, it would start about February 8. If that were the case, the duration of Standard Time would be reduced to no more than about 100 days.
Before jumping to the conclusion that Daylight Saving should be year round, you might want to consider the real live experiment during the energy crisis of the early 1970s. As I recall, it was abandoned after one year, primarily because of early morning darkness at the start of school, and the perceived risks that posed for school children.
3 hours ago
I think DST should be reserved for the time of year when there is actually some daylight to save, e.g. the time between the spring and fall equinoxes.
3 hours ago
Simple. Start and end school during daylight hours for grade school kids.
4 hours ago
Standardized national and international time zones would fix the problem without altering the clock and disrupting the internal biological clocks of people twice a year. Pick Standard or Daylight, and I don't care which, and keep it that way all thru the year.
4 hours ago
In 1952, when I was 10, my family took a road trip from CA to PA to visit family. One of my enduring memories was the changing time as we drove across Indiana. There were evenings as we entered a new town, announcing what time that particular town was on.
By Michael S. RosenwaldNovember 4 at 7:00 AM
‘Termination of chaos’: How daylight saving solved America’s clock craziness
One of the crazier facts about life in America is this: For roughly two decades, nobody had any clue what time it was.
In office buildings, it could be 4 p.m. on one floor and 5 p.m. on another — an important matter for several reasons, including who punched out first to get to happy hour. People would step off airplanes with no idea how to set their watches. Ponder this head-scratcher:
“A short trip from Steubenville, Ohio, to Moundsville, West Virginia became a symbol of the deteriorating situation. A bus ride down this thirty-five-mile stretch of highway took less than an hour. But along that route, the local time changed seven times.”
That “deteriorating situation,” as historian Michael Downing put it in his book “Spring Forward,” is the reason millions of Americans will set their clocks back this weekend for Daylight Saving. (And it is daylight saving, not savings. You’re welcome.) Those who forget are going to be very early for Sunday brunch.
[It’s time to ‘fall back’ again — daylight saving time ends this weekend]
Before 1966, when President Lyndon B. Johnson solved the craziness over America’s clocks two years after passing the Civil Rights Act, time was essentially anything governments or businesses wanted it to be. Though laws mandating daylight saving — to save fuel, to give shoppers extra time in the light — passed in 1918, by the end of World War II the system had become fractured and was ultimately dismantled.
These were nutty times, Downing writes, with some localities observing daylight saving, some not:
Left to their own devices, private enterprise and local governments — which had repeatedly demanded the right not to alter their clocks — took to changing the time as often as they changed their socks, setting off a nationwide frenzy of time tampering …
Downing writes. “Motorists driving west through the 5 p.m. rush hour in Council Bluffs, Iowa, found themselves tied up in the 5 p.m. rush hour in Omaha, Nebraska, an hour later.”
The historian also offers this truly astonishing fact: “By 1963, no federal agency of commission was even attempting to keep track of timekeeping practices in the United States.”
When the government did finally get involved, a committee was, of course, established.
It was called, “The Committee for Time Uniformity.”
Congressional hearings were held. Legislation was proposed. Editorials were written.
The measure “is a bid for the termination of chaos,” this newspaper opined. To those who would oppose such a sensible idea, the Post editorial page said, “It is better for them to adjust to the will of the majority than to tolerate the Babel of contradictory clocks.”
The Uniform Time Act of 1966 — designed “to promote the observance of a uniform system of time throughout the United States” — was signed into law by Johnson on April 13, 1966.
Six months later it became the law of the land, though one wonders: Did it go into effect at the very same time in New York and Chicago, which is one hour behind?
Actually, never mind.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Comments are always fun to read,here's a few.
1 hour ago
Well, at least we do not use DECIMAL TIME (French Revolutionary Time). That would be more confusing since we are used to the 12 our day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time#France
http://mentalfloss.com/article/32127/decimal-time-how-french-made-10-hour-day
1 hour ago
There is ample reason to have uniform time. There is no valid reason to have a shift from sttandard time to DST. Just make one or the other year the "standard" year round.
1 hour ago
Daylight " Savings " Time should be abolished in my opinion. There is no real evidence that DST is " Saving " anything. In fact, the opposite may be occurring, and Day Light Savings Time is actually the cause of more power usage. Also, in this day and age, when computers are on 24/7, and cell phone charging is mostly at night, a time change is invalid.
We should all just go back to Standard Time.
1 hour ago
Great article! I knew timekeeping was chaotic before the introduction of time zones in the late 19th century, but I had no idea there was such disarray as recently as 1966.
IIRC, there was no such confusion in the Washington area. Didn't DC, MD and VA all go on and off DST at the same time?
Also, local options or no, railroads and airlines must have followed some sort of standard time policy. Railroads were the reason time zones were established in the first place, and the need wouldn't have changed 100 years later.
1 hour ago
The author of this piece conflates two separate issues.
One is the uniformity of how we set times. That was an even worse problem in the past when towns set their own clocks by noting when the sun was at its highest at _their_ location. At that point there were not four times zones — there were potentially many times that number and they might differ my some number of minutes.
Fixing that was important, it took a national initiative — and railroad travel may have been at least partly responsible for it, since setting schedules with the existing system was a nightmare.
The second issue is the one regarding daylight savings time. Yes, it is set nationally — sort of — in a roughly uniform way. But daylight savings time itself doesn't solve these problems. The uniformity — even with a system that many do not like — is what solves the issues.
1 hour ago
Another example politicians' felt need to control the environment.
But in solving one problem, they create numerous unexpected negative consequences. Narcissists are such slow learners.
47 minutes ago
Oh, how cute -- someone who doesn't understand the issues, chiming in with some insults.
But then, the Internet Research Agency, in Moscow, doesn't give their little trolls time to bone up on the actual topics that they're commenting on. They've got their Big Book o' Media Talking Points, and that's what they use.
1 hour ago
A better solution would be for everyone to use Universal Coordinated Time, which is the same right round the world and in all seasons. So long as you don't need for your hour hand to roughly indicate the sun's position, this will solve many problems. While we're at it, we ought to jettison those antique Avoirdupois units of measurement, too.
2 hours ago
Much of what we think about the issue depends on where we live. Forty years or so ago I lived in the Florida panhandle in the very eastern part of the Central time zone. Before the time changed in the spring it would be getting light shortly after 4. If it had not changed, midsummer would have been insane. I visited relatives in Texas at the very western part of the zone and the difference was extreme.
One of my children was born the night in 1974 when we went on DST in early January. No one ever did figure out what time she was actually born be a useful the delivery room clocks did not match.
2 hours ago
Sigh. No connection in the article about railroads and the creation of standard time.
2 hours ago
When I was younger I remember the clocks changed at the end of April and the beginning of October. That made a lot of sense to me, and especially those living on the eastern edges of the time zone, where the sun was coming up at 4:45 in the morning by late April. This extended DST, where it is the rule rather than the "summer exception" is the problem. DST is three months too long!
2 hours ago
There's still a lot of controversy over daylight saving time. For a full history of daylight saving time around the world, see my 400 page ebook published earlier this year, The Great Daylight Saving Time Controversy.
3 hours ago
This absolute garbage of a nonsensical concept needs to be done away with. This whole baloney of having to change clocks and making our winter months even darker than they already are is pure madness. Let’s end this once and for all for god sake.
2 hours ago
The darkness that you complain about is because of standard time. Blame the sun.
3 hours ago
There is one part of the government that has known the exact time for almost 200 years: The US Navy. Longitudinal navigation depends upon a comparison of known time at fixed locations with the amount of time since sunrise on any specific given day at a different location. The US Naval Observatory has been calculating precise time since 1830, first by use of astronomical observation and now by use of atomic clocks accurate to minute fractions of a nanosecond. This accuracy of time is what enables GPS systems to function.
Now, why is it Daylight Saving Time and not Daylight Savings Time? Simply answer these two questions and you'll understand. Is the Heimlich a life savings maneuver or a life saving maneuver? Why?
3 hours ago
"Savings" is a noun; it's what you have in the bank. "Saving" is a gerund (verbal adjective) and modifies a noun. In this context it describes a category of time which supposedly saves daylight. (Although the sun is up for an equal amount of time at the same location on the same day, regardless of which system you are using.)
3 hours ago
In New Mexico, we have a legislator who keeps proposing that we stay on MDT year round. That might keep us in step with Arizona, making us an hour ahead of them throughout the year, but would create havoc with our other neighboring states--not to mention that schoolkids will be waiting for buses in the dark in the winter. Fortunately, he keeps getting voted down. Now, I do object to how DST was extended by a week or so on either end back in the 2000s.
2 hours ago
When I lived in Anchorage my children walked a mile to school in the dark. We gave then flash light. Children can cope. If people want more day light they can adjust their schedules or their latitude. Period.
2 hours ago
Halloween is during Daylight Saving Time. This leaves a little more daylight to trick-or-treat.
3 hours ago
Wow! I am a pretty aware guy and was even as a kid. I was in my teens during the 1960s, well read and politically active, and somehow the entire "time chaos" drama managed to unfold without me even noticing? Thank God for New England!
3 hours ago
(Edited)
For those who wish to go back to pre-1966 time, tell trump Obama signed The Uniform Time Act of 1966, then he will sign a proclamation cancelling The Uniform Time Act of 1966 !!!
3 hours ago
(Edited)
To get from Council Bluffs Iowa to Omaha Nebraska requires simply driving across a bridge. It doesn't take an hour; it takes about 10 minutes, once you get to the bridge. Plus, both cities are in the Central Time Zone.
3 hours ago
I'm trying to imagine what a rush hour in Council Bluffs would even look like... ;-)
4 hours ago
Whether or not you favor the Daylight Saving Time concept, there are some logical inconsistencies to the schedule. Daylight Saving Time starts about 8 days before the Spring Equinox, but ends some 40 days after the Fall Equinox. If the start of Daylight Saving was symmetrical with the end, it would start about February 8. If that were the case, the duration of Standard Time would be reduced to no more than about 100 days.
Before jumping to the conclusion that Daylight Saving should be year round, you might want to consider the real live experiment during the energy crisis of the early 1970s. As I recall, it was abandoned after one year, primarily because of early morning darkness at the start of school, and the perceived risks that posed for school children.
3 hours ago
I think DST should be reserved for the time of year when there is actually some daylight to save, e.g. the time between the spring and fall equinoxes.
3 hours ago
Simple. Start and end school during daylight hours for grade school kids.
4 hours ago
Standardized national and international time zones would fix the problem without altering the clock and disrupting the internal biological clocks of people twice a year. Pick Standard or Daylight, and I don't care which, and keep it that way all thru the year.
4 hours ago
In 1952, when I was 10, my family took a road trip from CA to PA to visit family. One of my enduring memories was the changing time as we drove across Indiana. There were evenings as we entered a new town, announcing what time that particular town was on.
Last edited:
Keep in mind folks it's Daylight Saving Time not SAVINGS.
