Trivial Tuesday

In Sunday's blog I forgot to mention Arizona is still on Mountain Standard Time. That means we are on the same time as the west coast. And for the east coast... I don't know. You'll have to figure it out. Here is a little trivia on the subject.

Ben Franklin is credited with originally conceiving the idea in 1784. It was so intriguing that he kept up correspondence about it for many years hence. But no one acted on it. William Willet pushed the concept in London in 1907. While he was out for his morning ride, he noticed people had their shades pulled to keep out the morning sun while they slept. His idea was to change the clocks 20 minutes each of the four Sundays in April (and then back the same way in September). Fortunately no one bought into that!


Germany and Austria adopted Daylight Saving Time, or Summer Time as it was sometimes called, in 1916. Other countries soon followed, including the United States. In 1918 the Standard Time Act and the four times zones were adopted in the US. However the idea of DST was not popular and that part of the Act was repealed the next year.


So over the years various localities passed their own versions of time savings. In the 1950s and 60s it was very confusing to travel across the US. For instance in Iowa there were 23 different pairs of start/stop times. Things were so confusing that businesses had to keep printing new time schedules. It cost the railroads $12 million (in today's $$) to print the various timetables. In 1966 some order was made of all this when Congress passed the Uniform Time Act. States who didn't want to have DST could opt out and some did (like Arizona). And of course, this became good campaign material. A 1996 Indiana gubernatorial candidate with the appropriate name of Rex Early mixed the concept with typical politicize by declaring, "Some of my friends are for putting all of Indiana on Daylight Savings Time, some are against it. And I always try to support my friends."


I understand. That's more than you ever wanted to know and I try to support my friends. But you need to know this: in 2005 Congress passed the Energy Policy Act which set Daylight Savings Time to begin on the 2nd Sunday in March and end on the 1st Sunday in November. So remember, fall back on November 1, 2009.


And we'll try to figure out what time it really is wherever we are.