Yeah. It was an emergency measure put in place because of the oil crisis. It was supposed to last 16 months but because of public outcry about school children stumbling around in the dark, Congress rescinded it and the country went back to DST the following October as usual. Basically, we just sprung forward 3 months early that year.
Interestingly, we here in Canada did not follow the United States’ lead at that time. And since we got (and still get) US TV signals from across the border, we could easily pick them up.
For me, as a young teenager, that meant that some of the best shows were an hour earlier on our TV, though in those pre-VCR days, you did have to plan. Happy Days did not come on at 8:00 PM, as it had, it was now on at 7:00 PM, for example. “Mom, make something for dinner that we can finish eating and cleaning up before 7. Happy Days is on!”
But the worst was the Buffalo NY news (we lived in Toronto at the time, and promos for tonight’s Buffalo news were broadcast during after-school programming). Parents were very upset that their children were heading to school in the dark. Buffalo businesses advertised that they had flashlights suitable for children–what that meant, I had no idea, as they looked just the same as any other flashlight, but maybe it brought in business. Seven-year-olds stumbling off to school, saying, “But Mommy, it’s dark!” And so on.
Just some memories of that experiment.
But the previous driver/pilot would still be on shift. Not a problem.
So it takes coordination. Coordination among workers, and between that company and the local schools, and the local schools and other employers…
That’s why “change the clocks” was a popular idea.
Here in Bozeman MT (which notwithstanding the above referenced growth of the southern states is booming) sunrise on Dec 21 would have been at 9:04 with twilight at 8:29. That’s a little rough, although being mostly retired I have no earthly reason not to set my own schedule. A lot of businesses would have to shift schedules (ski areas, construction unless you want to invest in lights).
So, all we have to do is shift everyone’s schedule by an hour? I wonder what the simplest way of doing that is.
OK here we go with THE PLAN™
Starting on the vernal equinox we move the clock forward 20 seconds per day for 180 days. Then 5 days (or 6 if next year is a leap year) of no movement then move the clock back 20 seconds per day until the next vernal equinox with adjustments made to the 5/6 days in the middle if the vernal equinox does not fall on the same day as the previous one.
And the southern hemisphere has to do it in reverse.
Because the school districts would have to buy enough buses to get all the kids to school at once, instead of staggering busing as they do now (high school > middle school > elementary). That’s a huge investment for something they only use twice a day for about 200 days a year.
Another way of looking at this issue (that will make the clock-changers’ heads explode) is what would we be doing if DST had never been implemented in the first place? Do you suppose the U.S. in 2022 would be a primitive culture, eking out subsistence livings, and living in ramshackle huts, uneducated and hopelessly illiterate?
Personally, I think we would have worked out some smooth system of getting our kids off to school in the mornings just fine, and early risers would be bitching about the sun rising too late for them in the winter and everyone else telling them “Deal with it, numbnuts. That’s how the earth works, less sunshine in the winter.”
Well, have you been to West Virginia lately?
The history of how time has been standardized is pretty interesting, and gives some insight into this. Towns used to just have their own time, based on local noon. And that worked fine because people generally didn’t have to synchronize schedules with people in other towns, and lots of work is effectively done by the sun anyway.
Then came the railroads, and all of a sudden it was real important that everyone use the same time. Ad hoc time adjustments are not consistent with a modern industrialized economy.
I think it’s worth being specific. The proposed solutions I’ve seen are (1) just have people get up and go off to work/school in the dark and (2) institutions adjust their time if they feel like it, and society has to adapt.
The problem with (1) is that everyone is less productive because it’s hard to get up in the dark and kids get hit by cars going to school more. Seems like a bad tradeoff vs changing the clocks. The problem with (2) is that modern society is very interconnected and the coordination costs of doing this are very high.
There was a time before DST was implemented, and it was the solution to those problems. If we hadn’t invented it back then, we’d invent it now, or sometime between, because the problems still exist, and it’s arguably the best solution to them. If you think we’d come up with another solution… what is that solution? As far as I can tell the suggestion is “ignore the problems that caused us to invent DST in the first place, or tell people they’re dumb for caring about those problems”.
I never heard that DST was supposed to be a solution to dark mornings. It would be very odd if it had been, because it makes dark mornings worse. It was supposed to provide more light in the evenings, not more light in the morning.
Sure, it’s standard time that provides more light in the mornings. But since we’re talking about keeping the current setup vs going to all-DST, the net change would be darker winter mornings.
I don’t think this will make anyone’s heads explode. It’s a borderline strawman argument. No one is arguing that a lack of clock switching will be catastrophic. Simply that clock switching is a better solution to the realities of seasonal sun shifts and a modern interconnected scheduled world than not clock switching. Addressing that argument requires more than pointing out that this is not an issue on which the fate of civilization rests.
Agreed. But DST wasn’t created in the first place to solve the problem of dark winter mornings; which appeared to me to be what your earlier post was claiming.
True. I regret the incorrect claim.
Thanks!
Far from proven. Not even attempted, as far as I can tell.
“Better”–for whom? The whole of society gets inconvenienced twice a year for those parents who don’t want to persuade their kids’ schools (which might not need persuading) to accommodate the change in seasons by adjusting the school schedule.
I’ve made a number of arguments in favor of it. They’re not rock-solid, but I think they’re decent. You could try addressing them.
Thanks, but I don’t feel the need. You’re arguing, in all of them, that all of society needs to be inconvenienced for the convenience of a select few, a type of argument I reject categorically.