Nope, not Franklin
The Legal Genealogist is no fan of changing the clocks twice a year.
It doesn’t truly save time anywhere. It throws off circadian rhythms for days, even weeks, after each change.
And you will never ever get my cat to accept that a clock change means he gets fed an hour earlier or later depending on the time of year.
So… who do we blame for this anyway?
Not Benjamin Franklin.
Yes, he wrote an essay in 1794 1784 (thanks to Eric Grundset!) suggesting that there were benefits to natural sunlight as opposed to artificial light, and then satirically suggesting things like a tax on shuttered windows and a limit on supplies of candles.1
No, he didn’t seriously suggest changing the clocks.
The dude who did seriously suggest changing the clocks was a New Zealander named George Hudson, an entomologist who wanted more sunlight to collect insects. That proposal, in 1895, went nowhere.2
A British builder named William Willett championed the idea in England in 1907, and that proposal didn’t really gain traction there until the First World War.3 That’s when the other side in that war — the German Empire and Austria-Hungary — implemented it on a national basis. (A couple of cities in Canada went that route even earlier.)4
And the United States didn’t adopt Daylight Saving Time until 1918.5 And then dumped it in 1919, with two-thirds of Congress even overriding a presidential veto to do so.6 At that point, changing the clocks became a local option.
World War II brought the notion back nationwide, from 1942-1945, but under the language of the enabling law, that ended six months after the war ended, at which time everything reverted back to local option.7
Congress finally adopted the Uniform Time Act in 1966, which provided for clock-changing and allowed any state that wanted to opt out to do so on a statewide basis.8
With some periods of mandatory compliance during the energy crises of the 1970s, that’s still the law today, and you can find it in Title 15 of the United States Code starting at section 260.
So… sigh… changing the clocks twice a year is the law here in the United States. But it’s only been the law in fairly recent years.
Which means we as genealogists can’t go writing about how our ancestors farther back in time than 1918 futzed around with changing their clocks.
And that we shouldn’t blame Benjamin Franklin for that stitch in time.
For this buggy idea, we can blame a New Zealand insect collector instead.
Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “That stitch in time,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 8 Nov 2021).
SOURCES
- See “Did Ben Franklin invent Daylight Saving Time?,” The Franklin Institute (https://www.fi.edu/ : accessed 8 Nov 2021). ↩
- See Wikipedia (https://www.wikipedia.com), “Daylight saving time,” rev. 8 Nov 2021. ↩
- See ibid., “William Willett,” rev. 30 Oct 2021. ↩
- Ibid., “Daylight saving time,” rev. 8 Nov 2021. ↩
- “An Act To save daylight and to provide standard time for the United States,” 40 Stat. 450 (19 Mar 1918). ↩
- “An Act For the repeal of the daylight-saving law,” 41 Stat. 280 (20 Aug 1919). ↩
- “AN ACT To promote the national security and defense by establishing daylight saving time,” 59 Stat. 9 (20 Jan 1942). ↩
- See “An Act to promote the observance of a uniform system of time throughout the United States,” 80 Stat. 107 (13 Apr 1966). ↩
We Kiwis have always been trouble-makers 🙁 I apologise to your cat, you and everyone else who hates it.
🙂 🙂 🙂
and allowed any state that wanted to opt out to do so on a statewide basis.8 Does that mean any state can pass legislation today to eliminate the practice within that state? That seems like it could be fairly easy to establish a non-changing time, since the federal government wouldn’t have to be involved.
Any state can pass legislation to remain on standard time year round. It may not, without Congressional approval, choose any other time. Some 19 states have already said they’d like to be permanently on daylight time. That’s not an option under the law as it stands.
Washington State is one of those 19. And I really do hope this passes . . .
I’ve always wanted to know if Daylight Savings Time (which I think is a total waste of time and efficiency!) was in effect in the state where I was born when I was born. Is there a resource to determine that?
Checking the statutes of the time is probably the best source. Or the newspapers.
George, check out https://www.timeanddate.com/time/change/usa/new-york?year=1958
and choose the time frame you are looking for. I found this years ago on Cindi’s List which Judy mentioned a few weeks ago.
That’s a great resource, Kev — thanks!
Some may not believe it but the changing of our time back and forth is not really a healthy thing for the human body (see circadian rhythms). The upsetting of our human body clocks can cause everything from migraines to depression. Interesting, read up on your rhythms.
I sure believe it! And so do others a lot more qualified than I am about health impacts!
California voters passed an initiative directing the Legislature to come up with a plan to opt out of “time changing.” That was almost two years ago, but the Legislature has done nothing. But here’s the secret to “legal time:” it’s not “mandatory” for any individual. Anybody can opt out at any “time.” Now, one may miss some events or be late to work, butone could strike a blow for individual rights. :))!
That’s not what the initiative was. It was to allow the Legislature, by two-thirds vote, to opt for permanent daylight time IF Congress ever acted to allow it. Otherwise, it simply conforms to federal law.
I jokingly tell friends from time-change states that we don’t change our clocks because it fades the cows.
In truth, because I live at the hot end of the country, and it’s hard to get to sleep in mid-summer due to heat anyway. An hour earlier would be extra hard. Originally part of the idea was to save electricity by not needing as much electric light. Now we would need to turn our AC on an hour earlier, just when it costs the most. And build an extra power station to cope. Seriously.
More importantly, just as our forebears were invited to events at nights with a full moon, so they could travel back safely (or they were put up for the night), changing the clocks leads to some subtle effects that need to be captured for future generations.
Take the time to write a piece for descendants on what changing the clocks (or not) has meant to your life. Tell your grandkids a story about it.
(For me in another state it meant driving to work into blinding sun and home into the sun for nearly five months a year instead of only two, and encouraged me to look for a different job. [Non-negotiable hours, and only one road.])
And by the way, because the dairies want their milk an hour earlier, the cows have to change too, and they don’t like it. But no, they don’t fade any extra. Nor do the curtains. We just think those further from the equator think we are stupid enough to believe it when we tell them that.
To expand the topic on temporal matters, what about the date for Easter? Apologies if you’re already aware but it was fixed in the UK as the first Sunday after the second Saturday by the Easter Act 1928. However it has never been brought into force. The website for UK legislation is https://www.legislation.gov.uk/
An issue for another day, for sure.