# Daylight savings time
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-savings-time/15412
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [March 31, 2000, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-savings-time/15412 "2000-03-31T13:21:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2000, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-savings-time/15412/1 "2000-03-31T13:21:00Z")
Day light savings time is coming soon and it has me wondering. Right now I am waking up with the sun well past the horizon at 6am and I like that.
My question is this: I know that DST is relatively new. It’s been done since 1968 (I think) and I was wondering what exactly happened to the days prior to setting the clocks forward and back? Was the sun rising at 3am in May and setting at 2p? or what?
What made the " powers that be" change what had been going on for centuries.
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I’m living so beyond my income that we may almost said to be living apart
-e e cummings
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### Author:  [@Andy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2000, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-savings-time/15412/2 "2000-03-31T13:23:00Z")
Couldn’t you just subtract an hour from the normal sunrise/sunset times to get the answer? Or does DST involve more than one hour movement in the time?
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### Author:  [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2000, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-savings-time/15412/3 "2000-03-31T13:29:00Z")
Surely a newbie like yourself wouldn’t be able to find the Search Engine 😃
[http://boards.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/000116.html](http://boards.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/000116.html)
[http://boards.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/003446.html](http://boards.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/003446.html)
[http://sdc.htrigg.smu.edu/HTMLpages/Spring97/DC.04-04-97/DC.04-04-97-n.clock.html](http://sdc.htrigg.smu.edu/HTMLpages/Spring97/DC.04-04-97/DC.04-04-97-n.clock.html)
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**Coldfire**
_Voted **Poster Most Likely To Post Drunk** _
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**WallyM7** on Coldfire:
_ **"Yeah, he knows a little about everything because they have a good prison library."** _
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### Author:  [@sorrel554](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sorrel554)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2000, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-savings-time/15412/4 "2000-03-31T15:56:00Z")
The history of daylight saving time, and the standardization of time in general, is really complicated, but also interesting. (I took a semester-long class on this subject. I won’t bore you with the long version :)) If you are interested in reading more about it, I would recommend **Keeping Watch: A History of American Time** by Michael O’Malley.
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### Author:  [@techchick68](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/techchick68)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2000, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-savings-time/15412/5 "2000-03-31T16:08:00Z")
Actually, Daylight savings time started in 1918 from a “today in history” thing that I read everyday. It appeared yesterday or today.
I am having trouble getting back to the website to verify it…
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### Author:  [@jab1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jab1)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2000, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-savings-time/15412/6 "2000-03-31T20:30:00Z")
Benjamin Franklin was the first to propose daylight-saving time.
And that is the proper term, BTW. It is NOT “daylight saving **s** ”.
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Feel free to correct me at any time. But don’t be surprised if I try to correct you.
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### Author:  [@Carl\_Berry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carl_Berry)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2000, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-savings-time/15412/7 "2000-04-01T01:14:00Z")
## Born & raised in Pennsylvania, I generally liked DST except that drive-in movies started so late. I moved to Michigan where they started even later. Michiganders (& Michigeese, too) seem to hate DST, especially the farmers! I couldn’t understand why, as farmers work according to the sun’s position, not according to the time. But, every year at this time of year, most of the state was upset about the time change. It isn’t suprising that a DST post came from MI!
Carl
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### Author:  [@mega\_the\_roo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mega_the_roo)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2000, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-savings-time/15412/8 "2000-04-01T03:17:00Z")
we just skip the whole dst thing here in saskatchewan.
bhahaha, all you clock adjusting suckers, you! 😃
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if wishes were fishes, we could walk on the ocean.
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### Author:  [@Persephone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Persephone)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2000, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-savings-time/15412/9 "2000-04-01T03:24:00Z")
I don’t know why it happens. I think it’s a plot by smoke-alarm battery salesmen. They always tell us to replace the smoke-alarm batteries at the spring & fall time changes.
It does kinda suck that it happens on a Sunday, too. Can’t use the time change as an excuse to be late for work. 🙂
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This is my new sig. Thank Wally. It was his idea.
“I made my husband join a bridge club. He jumps next Tuesday.”
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### Author:  [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2000, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-savings-time/15412/10 "2000-04-01T15:47:00Z")
It’s spring forward, fall back, right?
daylight saving time noun (1919)
: time usu. one hour ahead of standard time — called also daylight saving, daylight time
©1996 Zane Publishing, Inc. and Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
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### Author:  [@malden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/malden)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2000, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/daylight-savings-time/15412/11 "2000-04-01T21:51:00Z")
minor thread hijack:
I live in the Eastern time zone and sometimes, in the **summer** months, I’ll get e-mails that say, for example, “The teleconference with the Denver office will be at 2:00 Mountain Standard Time.” So should I call them when the watches and clocks in Denver say 3:00 and it’s 5:00 here? Because when it’s 3:00 Mountain Daylight Time it’s 2:00 Mountain Standard Time. It is as if they are using the term “\_\_\_ Standard Time” to refer to the standardization of times via the establishment of time zones, when I always took “\_\_\_ Standard Time” to mean “The time in that time zone when DST is not in effect.” To refer to the time zone itself without regard to what time of year it is, I just say “The teleconference is at 2:00 Mountain Time.”
Am I right in clinging to this as a pet peeve?
malden