posted
Hope you remembered to set your clocks. I know I didn't.
Though, why do we still have Daylight Savings Time? Not like we really need it, do we? A couple states, Hawaii and Arizona (I think) get along just fine without that extra hour.
------------------ "Tigers are mean! Tigers are fierce! Tigers have teeth and claws that pierce!" Federation Starship Datalink - On that annoying Tripod server, sucks don't it?
Daylight savings time was started up back in the late 1700-early 1800's when electricity wasn't used yet. This method pushed back clocks 1 hour to get back the lost hour of daylight when winter started coming and the days were getting shorter. Thus allowing people to have more daylight during the winter months, and saving on candles and lamp oil. To reset it, they just had the hour turned back in the spring when they could go back to regular time. I do believe either Benjamin Franklin came up with the idea, or that he advocated it till it passed.
But the important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time.
------------------ "Goverment exists to serve, not to lead. We do not exist by its volition, it exists by ours. Bear that in mind when you insult your neighbors for refusing to bow before it." J. Richmond, UB Student
posted
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that during WW II they instituted "war time", which was continuous daylight savings time.
DST is of absolutely no use to you if you happen to be a farmer (Cows do not consult clocks to determine when they ought to be milked). However, for organizations that consume energy (electric power, gas heating, etc.), daylight savings can reduce the amount of energy used during the day.
I recall that during the "Energy Crisis" in the 1970s, the whole nation went to daylight time in an effort to conserve energy. I was not particularly impressed, since I had to walk 2 miles to school in the dark. I think that there were a lot of farmers who were not particularly impressed with national DST, either. It just meant that they had one less hour in the afternoon to get things done in town, because all the stores closed earlier.
--Baloo
------------------ "As for language, almost everything goes now. That is not to say that verbal taboos have disappeared, but merely that they have shifted somewhat. In my youth, for example, there were certain words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can say them, but you can't say 'girl'." -- Professor Tom Lehrer [interview] http://www.geocities.com/cyrano_jones.geo/
[This message has been edited by Baloo (edited April 02, 2000).]
posted
At any rate, it hardly seems necessary now, though I'll admit to staying up last night so I could get an odd sort of temporal thrill watching the clock on my computer leap ahead an hour. Time is cool.
------------------ "What did it mean to fly? A tremor in your soul. To resist the dull insistance of gravity." -- Camper Van Beethoven
[This message has been edited by Sol System (edited April 03, 2000).]
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