Losing track of saving time

by Sharlene Irete

sirete@recordcourier.com

I was under the assumption that daylight-saving time was created to help farmers plant and harvest crops during daylight hours or as a means to save energy.

Because of Wikipedia, I found out that the idea of advancing clocks in the spring and setting them back in fall had to do with bugs, golf and French fries.

George Vernon Hudson is cited for writing a paper in 1898 on the advantages of extending daylight hours in the summer. He was a New Zealand post office worker who liked to collect bugs after work.

Someone must have thought it was a good idea to give George more time to pursue his hobby because New Zealand observes daylight-saving time to this day. I also found out from Wikipedia that George's bug collection survives in New Zealand's national museum.

Also on Wikipedia's daylight-saving time page is William Willett. William was out horseback riding early one summer day in 1907 and thought his still-sleeping neighbors were wasting the best part of the day. He probably didn't notice the farmers in the next county who had been working since the sun was up - no matter what time it said on the clock.

Still, William made it his life's work to inflict daylight-saving time on everyone by suggesting it as law in England, which enacted it in 1915 during World War I.

William Willett is also the great-great-grandfather of Chris Martin of Coldplay. Thank you, Wikipedia.

Daylight-saving time was used in the United States but wasn't made into U.S. law until the Lyndon Johnson administration in 1966, with any state having the option to create laws to not participate.

Daylight-saving time was extended seven weeks through the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Since 2007 daylight-saving time is from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November.

Interest groups involved in lobbying for the Energy Policy Act of 2005 included Idaho senators who thought people were more likely to go to fast food restaurants during extended daylight hours, and hence more likely to buy French fries, made from Idaho potatoes.

Daylight-saving time is good for leisure activities and shopping at 7-Eleven, so sporting goods manufacturers and convenience store associations lobbied for the 2007 extension.

Actual energy savings associated with extending daylight hours varied throughout the U.S., but what seems to be more important about daylight-saving time is that it's good for golfing.

When we fell back last November, I spent about half of that extra hour resetting clocks on the microwave, in my car, on the televisions, on thermostats and changing batteries in the smoke alarms and sprinklers. Instead of thinking I'm losing an hour when we spring forward for daylight-saving on Sunday, I think of it as just evening things out.