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Did Benjamin Franklin Invent Daylight Saving Time?
An anonymous reader writes "While living in Paris, Ben Franklin was struck by how many hours of daylight were being wasted to sleep during the summer months. He wrote an open letter to a Parisian journal lamenting the wasted expenditures on candlewax, and presented his back-of-the-quillpad estimates of the cost savings if the entire population arose an hour or two earlier. However, Franklin did not specifically mention moving the clocks ahead; instead, he suggested official means for enforcement (rationing the sale of candlewax to families) and encouragement (ringing church bells at sunrise). The clock-shifting technique which we know and love was credited to the New Zealander George Vernon Hudson, who proposed it in 1895. DST was first widely adopted by warring countries during World War I as a way of conserving coal needed for military purposes. This launched a debate over DST's usefulness that continues to the present day (particularly by people stumbling about in their bathrooms). Of course, Franklin is also associated with other questionable ideas, including bifocals, lightning rods, electric current flowing from the positive to negative terminal, leaking official documents to fan opposition, and an independent United States of America."
New research suggests the daylight saving time change will lead to lower productivity tomorrow as the lost sleep makes workers more likely to slack (PDF).
One of my childhood heroes - I'm not surprised that he would have questioned the custom of keeping the same hours throughout the year as the sun rises and sets at different times.
My favourite story about him: Thomas Jefferson would not allow Franklin to work on the Declaration of Independence because he feared Franklin would put too many jokes in it.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
may he rot in hell ...
oh, that's right, he's in Philly... nevermind
I like going home after work and still having daylight. I can go out for a run, have a picnic, and not be fearful of vampires.
I always await DST with bated breath every year.
And I rue its passing every fall
We are so far east in the Eastern time zone, which goes all the way from Western Indiana to Maine, that we should actually be in the Atlantic time zone with the Canadian Maritime provinces.
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GMO
Are we going to abolish the stupidity of the concept of Daylight Savings Time? It saves no daylight.
There will be a higher percentage of car crashes tomorrow due to people being awake an hour earlier. Then in fall, there will be higher suicides when there is suddenly, with no logical explanation to your circadian cycle, dramatically less sunlight.
This is an abomination and really has a horrible effect on me and other each year.
It needs to go away with other anachronisms. I mortally detest it.
This is really bad. I woke up this morning and noticed that is was noon instead of 11am like it should be. They fucking stole an hour from my life! Sure some might say I'll get it back next time we adjust the clock, but what if I don't make it to that time? It's gone, this is completely horrible.
Sleep-journal.com: "Results: There was a significant increase in accidents for the Monday immediately following the spring shift to DST (t=1.92, P=0.034). There was also a significant increase in number of accidents on the Sunday of the fall shift from DST (P0.002)."
Get rid of DST. Arizona has it right (no DST). Doesn't help that the whole world doesn't even follow the DST change at the same time.
This "electricity" is merely a fad and will come to nothing. Ha, and those bifocal things will cause the innocent wearer to become cross-eyed. Such dangerous radicals are not to be suffered in the King's lands!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Here in Saskatchewan we are pretty much the only province in Canada that doesn't switch time in regards to DST. So in effect we are like Arizona and don't switch.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
I read a quote somewhere (Google says it's of Navajo origin) that changed the way I thought about daylight savings time. It went something like this:
"Daylight Savings Time is the equivalent of cutting off the bottom of a blanket and sewing it on to the top because your blanket is too short."
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
C.G.P. Grey did a swell video on this subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84aWtseb2-4
Frankly, the system as is a chaotic mess. I find myself more and more often tempted to state HH:MM p/a GMT. It just seems like something that was good in theory about two hundred years ago, but now? Confusion. There is a reason standard time for trains considered such a great advance. DST now seems like a step backwards.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
The standard for "invention" has dropped a long way hasn't it. The whole "getting up with the sunrise" idea from antiquity was the original dailylight savings time. It was only once people started working in dungeons ...er ... factories that schedules started being different from work when you can see what you're doing. You can't forget something and then remember it and replace it with a less precise system and call it an invention.
It's pretty clear Franklin was trolling big time with that letter.
Franklin is also associated with other questionable ideas, including bifocals, lightning rods, electric current flowing from the positive to negative terminal, leaking official documents to fan opposition, and an independent United States of America
I didn't realize he postulated (or invented) the flow of electrons incorrectly!
FYI, just to clarify for all you non electrically inclined folks out there, electrons flow from the negative terminal (where a surplus of electrons are, hense the negative charge) to the positive terminal (where there is a lack of electrons.)
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
If you think productivity will go down tomorrow, wait and see what happens on the 22nd. That's when the new Angry Birds comes out.
Obviously, Ben Franklin didn't invent DST. Bobby Boucher's mother did... Ben Franklin is THE DEVIL!
No.
My wife hates DST, so she looked into the actual law.
Here it is: The federal US government sets the days that the DST transition happens on. It's up to the individual states to go on DST or not.
So, you could work at a state level to just have your state not participate in it.
That's it.
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
If you want a visual explanation of the purpose and result of daylight saving time, check out this graph: Picasa Web Albums - Paul Nickerson
The purpose, as I understand it, is to make the sun not rise super early against the clock during the summer. The effect is that it reduces the range of sunrise times, while increasing the range of sunset times. In a way, it normalizes sunrises while amplifying sunsets.
Oh, and while we're at it, during a non-DST period, if the time zones were evenly split and straight with no regard to human geographic borders, then at the middle of the time zone, 12:00 (noon) would be the time that astronomical noon is (when the sun is highest in the sky), varying by about 20 minutes before and after noon. If you average all the astronomical noons over the course of a year in the middle of a time zone, then astronomical noon is at precisely 12:00. During DST, astronomical noon is moved to 1:00 pm (13:00)
As the summary mentions, Ben's argument was basically that "early to bed and early to rise" saved energy. Getting up with the sun and going to sleep earlier in the evening reduced the need for lamp oil. And while we use electricity instead of lamp oil, this argument is still used today.
However, when you consider that lighting is becoming more and more efficient and most of our personal energy consumption now goes to heating and cooling, the picture changes. Since the Earth takes time to warm and cool each day, the daily temperature cycle lags behind the sun by a few hours. Getting up early in the winter just means more energy spent heating your home and office, and working late in the day during summer means high A/C bills.
Plus, most people want some daylight time outside the typical 8-5 work window. There's no reason to line up the work day with daylight hours; these days, most people are cooped up in office buildings and don't really care whether it's light or dark out. And commuting during sunrise or sunset is dangerous, so that's another good reason to offset the workday from the sun cycle.
Finally, studies have shown that a period of bright light, preferably sunlight, is important for our health during the winter months. So yet again it makes no sense to align the workday with the daylight cycle, since commuters at northern latitudes only see a bit of dawn and dusk during their commute and are stuck indoors during the bright part of the day.
While it may be a bit extreme, I think the ideal solution is to start the workday a couple hours past sunrise in the winter and a couple hours before sunrise in the summer. You'll be active during the warmest hours of winter and cooler hours in summer, you'll have free time during daylight hours year round, you'll commute to work in bright sunlight during the winter, and you'll avoid staring into the sun while commuting most of the year. Of course, nobody would want to a several-hour time change, so it would be better to spread it out: Lose a minute every night for half the year, then gain a minute each night for the other half. In addition, there could also be a couple jumps during the year to help avoid commuting at dawn/dusk. Getting people to accept waking up before dawn during summer and having sunset in the middle of the afternoon during winter might still take some work, but I think it would be safer, healthier, and more efficient for everyone.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
My respect for him just took a nosedive.
DST is stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid..
At the latitude of Paris, or New York City, in the middle of summer when sunrise is around 4:30am, and your typical city dweller doesn't rise until 7 or 8, but the burns candles several hours into the night, it makes perfect sense.
In Florida, it's just stupid. Kids are going to be dropped off at school before twilight starts tomorrow morning.
Singaporeans liked the concept of Daylight Saving so much that in 1982 they moved to it permanently. Geographically they should be UTC+7 but they currently work off UTC+8.
</ useless trivia >
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New research suggests the daylight saving time change will lead to lower productivity tomorrow as the lost sleep makes workers more likely to slack
Slackers will use any excuse available to slack off
If they can't blame it on daylight saving time, they will blame it on something else
On the other hand, those who work hard will always work hard, come what may
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Wait...what? Tomorrow?
Why didn't anyone tell me?
Shit! I have to get to bed!
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I used to live in northern Western Australia which never got around to making DST permanent (they trial it from time to time). We just started school at 8am and finished at 2:30pm instead of starting at 9am and finishing at 3:30pm. That was more a result of climate than DST but it still worked just fine and meant that we could do whatever worked best for us without imposing any changes to the southern part of the state. Leaving the clocks alone and just starting your day at a different time makes a lot more sense to me.
OTOH, within a given region the service based industries need to be working at similar times to the people they service, and your proposition would increase the total number of hours they need to operate. It's not a problem without a solution though.
But I definitely agree with your thoughts on night-shifts. People need exposure to daylight during their waking hours and darkness while they sleep. Or daylight lamps and synthetic melatonin...
Huh? The only reason to work longer hours is if the country is not producing enough to feed everyone. But is that true?
If the country is producing enough to feed everyone and you have too few jobs and too many workers why not:
a) work shorter hours?
b) work the same hours, but give everyone a basic income so that the jobless don't need jobs to survive?
If the country is not producing enough to feed everyone, then it's screwed in the long run. You can hide it by going into debt or other tricks, but the real solution is to figure out a way to increase productivity.
People with no hope of finding jobs stealing stuff from me does not increase productivity.
While it may be a bit extreme, I think the ideal solution is to start the workday a couple hours past sunrise in the winter and a couple hours before sunrise in the summer. You'll be active during the warmest hours of winter and cooler hours in summer, you'll have free time during daylight hours year round,
No you would be cooped up in an office during the warmest hours of winter and the cooler hours in summer. All your free time would be during the hottest hours of summer and the coldest hours of winter. That sounds like a good way for office buildings to save heating/cooling expenses, but would increase residential expenses, and make it less enjoyable to spend your free time outside.
For someone in the warmer latitudes, what I would like to see is the opposite. Leave winter hours as they are, and then shift the clock an hour later in the summer. That way you spend the hottest hours in the office, it will have cooled off by the time you are getting ready for bed, and you have time in the morning when it is cooler to spend outside before going to work.
Since many of us are interested in shifting clocks to allow for a more productive work day, and save lighting expenses, I propose a new twist to this system: the Workweek Saving Day. It is a very simple concept, really. Each Saturday night, instead of it becoming Sunday at the stroke of midnight, it becomes Monday. How awesome is that?! This way, we can all provide one more productive day of work to our beloved employers and do busy busy things to make the big cog-wheel turn. Come on li'l gipper, ya with me?!
An old Indian chief once said that only the United States government believes that by cutting a foot off the top of a blanket and sewing it on the bottom, you get a longer blanket.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
DST is a stupid idea.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
Each to his own, I found it a quite enjoyable break. Something appealing about going home at the crack of dawn.
Let's be real, no one invented daylights savings, clocks un-invented it. We all did it quite normally prior to the interference of, clocks and other peoples greed and demands.
Just look at all the productivity gains over the last fifty years, where did it all go, not shared around at all, most of it went to feed the greed of a psychopathic minority. Reality is we should already be down to a 4 day 6 hour per day week but the greedy are never ever satiated, no matter how much they have and more importantly how little the rest of us have.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
He also invented internet, socks and parachutes. All while fighting ninjas.
In the US, as long as benefits - esp. health care - are connected to "full-time" employment as a binary relationship, this won't happen. It's in the interest of the employer to have as few people as possible at "full-time", and low-wage jobs are notorious for cutting off workers at 34.5 hours, or whatever the threshold is for the state.
I would GLADLY work 3/4 the hours for 3/4s the pay and 3/4s the health insurance, but it doesn't work like that.
If we had "single-payer" health insurance, you'd see a LOT more variety in working schedules, and we'd have fuller employment; the same number of hours would be worked (disallowing any network effects from single-payer insurance) but more people would be busy working them.
At this time, I can work a "natural" schedule, because I'm not serving any customers.
That means getting up at around 6AM when the birds start shrieking and the sun peeks through the windows. Here in Saskatchewan we don't follow daylight savings time; we just get up earlier if we feel like it. Nobody forces us to get up early in some vindictive attempt to get more work out of us during daylight hours.
Which is odd, when you think about it, because as a farming-dominated culture, you'd think the farmer's "crack of dawn" mentality would have won DST a place in provincial politics. Instead, the farmers are pragmatic and consider the idea of changing the clocks to be silly; they just get up whenever the sun does, regardless of the clock time, the same way farmers have for centuries.
As to Ben Franklin "inventing" DST? I don't think so. There's a huge difference between lamenting the late candle-lit hours and expense thereof and actually tabling some sort of proposal to address the problem. Franklin complained about the issue; he didn't propose a solution of any kind.
But then again, the Americans never have been content to accept that they didn't invent everything useful in the world. They've long claimed they invented the telephone, despite the clear evidence that it was a Canadian invention.
But y'all just keep go on re-writing history to make yourselves feel better about your importance in a world that cares less and less about the US and more about the interaction of a global economy free from the interference of your banking culture and government interference in foreign nation's policies. The rest of the world still has their history books, so we know it's all a lie.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
In Soviet Russia, meme laughs at you!