It has been a couple of weeks since we sprung forward in time. On March 10, 2019, we “lost” one hour of sleep because at 2:00am on that day we moved our clocks forward 1 hour – it suddenly became 3:00am. This was the start of Daylight Saving Time (DST) for 2019.
Why do we have Daylight Saving Time? I have heard different reasons for this. The one story that stands out the most is that it was an attempt to “shift” time so that there would be less need for gas during the first World War. By shifting time towards daylight, there would be less need for artificial light. This first happened in Germany but it followed quickly in other countries. The US started using DST only a couple of years after Germany. The second story I heard is that Ben Franklin suggested it as a way to get more daylight for farming but there is no real history of the use of DST prior to the first World War.
Less than a year after it was introduced here in the US, it was repealed. Some cities continued to use it but the official US policy was that it was no longer in use. During World War II, DST was re-introduced for the same reason as before – to shift time so there would be less need for artificial light. But there was no established rules around the use of DST. This changed later under the Uniform Time Act of 1966. It established a framework for DST with a uniform, synchronized schedule across the US. It set the last Sunday of April as the start of DST and the last Sunday of October as the end. More recently, the US passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This moved the start time up three weeks and the end time back one week.
While I was not around for most of the history of DST, I was working in IT during this last change to DST from the Energy Policy Act. While this Act seemed simple, it added a lot of work to implement on systems. Any new system tended to just need a patch installed to make that change. But the older systems had to have code created to make the change. For instance, at that time I still had some NT 4.0 servers – we were trying hard to get rid of them but most IT people understand that it takes time to do so. Of course, Microsoft was no longer supporting that operating system by then. When we asked Microsoft, they offered to write the code change for us for a very large fee – it started at $40k but went down to $10k. Personally, I found this to be outrageous so I created my own change. It worked but still had to be installed manually on all the NT 4.0 servers.
So, why did I write about this history? The week after the start of DST this year (especially on Monday), I heard a lot of opinions asking why we are still changing time. The recommendation from a lot of people was to just stay with the DST time year round. One thing I found in common with most of the people that had this opinion was that they did not like losing that hour of sleep. However, this is not a good reason to change time.
Personally, I say do not make any changes to DST and here are my reasons. For starters, the same people that were complaining about losing that hour of sleep have already recovered and probably have forgotten their opinion. Secondly, I remember the work I had to do last time DST was changed and I really do not want to go through it again. However, my biggest reason is the domino effect from switching to DST time year round. It would start in the US and have to work its way around the world as the US only governs time for itself. Plus, places like Arizona would either need to change or remain aligned with another time zone.
It would be easiest to just leave time alone and deal with the short time of losing that one hour. Agree with me? Let me know. Think I am absolutely wrong? Go ahead and tell me why.