A few facts on daylight saving time

When I was younger, I was vehemently opposed to daylight saving time. I never saw the point of it, assuming that it belonged to war-era attempts at conserving electricity and getting more work out of people. Although one unexpected benefit of aging has been that I wake up earlier than I used to, so I no longer spend days complaining about “springing forward,” I still find it an odd and archaic practice. So, in the interest of fairness and my ongoing attempts to challenge my own beliefs, I decided to delve into a couple of Library databases to discover the true origins of this bi-annual event.

The first fact I discovered is that neither Arizona nor Hawaii use daylight saving time (DST). Hawaii I understand, because why mess with a tropical paradise? Also, it’s an island, so you don’t have to worry about accidentally crossing over its border and forgetting to change all your clocks. But what makes Arizona so special? Although I wholeheartedly agree with their stance on this issue, and they probably don’t need that “extra” hour of sunlight, I can only imagine how confusing it must be for unwitting travelers from California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, or New Mexico!

Many people think that the original reason for adopting DST was so farmers could have more daylight in the field, but the farm lobby was actually against DST because it reduced the time they had in the morning for milking and bringing crops to market. In fact, the first DST law was repealed after World War I to placate angry farmers. On the flip side; industrialists, politicians, and the Chamber of Commerce were among the first early supporters, and although DST has not been proven to reduce energy consumption, it has been proven to increase economic consumption, boosting the golf and barbecue industries by hundreds of millions of dollars.

And to those of us who think daylight saving time “feels” longer than it used to, you are not delusional! Not only does it feel longer, it is longer, because in 2007 the federal government expanded DST from its previous range between the first Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October, to the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November. So out of 12 months, we now have 8 months of “made up” time, effectively rendering DST the new normal.

While DST in this country has been around, in some form or another, since 1918, its current iteration has only been in effect for a little over 10 years. And it could change again! The federal government decided to adopt year-round daylight saving time during the energy crisis of 1973-74, although they reinstated civil, AKA “normal” time, at the end of 1974. My point here is that the federal government, although it increasingly appears to have little power over many things, still has the power to change time.

However, until our state or federal governments resign themselves to the loss of those millions of extra barbecue dollars, it looks like we’re stuck with DST. Unless you live in Arizona or Hawaii, in which case, consider yourself lucky, and I hope you’re enjoying the sunshine.

All research for this article was performed on library databases.

Vanessa Velez is a librarian with the East Bonner County Library District.

Sources:

Explora and Flipster

Daylight saving time. (2017). Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, 1

Demarino, Nicholas. (2012). Arizona on standard time as US springs forward. AP Regional State Report - Arizona

Waxman, O. B. (2017). The Original Point of Daylight Saving Time. Time, 189(10), 21.