Daylight Saving Time

[GordMay]

Setting our work/school day, to the time of sunrise, would result in chaos; because the change in sunrise time depends on the time/season of year, and your geographical location [latitude].
Near the Equator: The sunrise time changes very little throughout the year, often just a few seconds.
Mid-Latitudes: The variation can be more pronounced, with changes ranging from about 1 to 2 minutes per day, around the equinoxes [March 21 & September 23] to more significant changes [up to 3 or 4 minutes], around the solstices [June 21 & December 21].
Higher Latitudes: In polar regions [66° 34' N or S], the variation can be extreme, where the sun may not rise at all, during the polar night, and may not set during the summer’s polar day [midnight sun].

[PippaB]

You call it chaos, I call it living with the planet the way it is

Much more akin to 5BTM's "Labrador time." DST (and clocks in general) are just one of so many of man's attempts to mold the world to our whims rather then living with world the way it came. If you really need the mold, define "6AM" as sunrise wherever you are and go from there each day. Yes, that means that your "day" will be a bit more than 24 "hours" long from winter solstice to summer solstice, and a bit less the other half of the year - so what?

Standardized time has only around for about a 150 years, as a convenience for some, a result of the Industrial Revolution, but with the result that some people, like Montanan, rise in the dark while others in the same state do not.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by PippaB

... If you really need the mold, define "6AM" as sunrise wherever you are and go from there each day. Yes, that means that your "day" will be a bit more than 24 "hours" long from winter solstice to summer solstice, and a bit less the other half of the year - so what? ...

For extreme northern [or southern] latitudes, on the summer solstice, the Sun will not set [therefore, nor rise], above latitude 65.7°. At the winter solstice, sunrise will not occur above latitude 67.4°.
In such seasons, and circumstances, time would not exist, under your plan.
Well done! You've broken the Universe.

[Montanan]

In many States, bars are mandated to close at 2 AM. But on the end of Daylight Savings the clocks get set back to 1 AM at 2 AM on Monday so one can continue to party like it is 2025 and be ready to start your work week properly.



FYI:

Is daylight saving time ending?
The push to stop changing clocks was put before the USA Congress in the last couple of years, when the U.S. Senate unanimously approved the Sunshine Protection Act in 2022, a bill to make daylight saving time permanent.

Although the Sunshine Protection Act was passed unanimously by the Senate in 2022, the U.S. House of Representatives did not pass it and President Joe Biden did not sign it.

A 2023 version of the act remained idle in Congress, as well.

Senator Marc Rubio [R - Florid'uh] is a sponsor of the Sunshine Protection Act which may be reasonable for such a deep southern state but is inappropriate for us Northerners which have real winter with short day light. Perhaps he should pursue a Hurricane Protection Act, banning the import of storms, or changing the months of hurricane season.

[requiem]

Originally Posted by PippaB

Standardized time has only around for about a 150 years, as a convenience for some, a result of the Industrial Revolution, but with the result that some people, like Montanan, rise in the dark while others in the same state do not.

It seems to me that, once you have regular methods of travel or communication that easily outpace the sun's journey across the sky, timezone references are a practical necessity.

Local businesses (and schools) can always opt for more suitable hours. I see it plenty of times; some open at 7, others not until 11. Some close at 5, others at 6 or 7, and so forth.

It is also simpler for people to lump nearby towns together, so that they can agree on a common reference. E.g. "let's meet at 1500 Seville time", even if the Spanish participant is actually in Gades (er, I guess the kids are calling it Cádiz now).

For myself, if I'm having a call with people in different parts of the planet, using local solar time would be a mess. So, we use a simpler method: we pick a time and specify a common zone (e.g. "UK time") so the math stays simple and there's no confusion.

[Montanan]

I can't wait to turn the clocks back this weekend and gain another hour of being unable to sleep.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Setting our work/school day, to the time of sunrise, would result in chaos; because the change in sunrise time depends on the time/season of year, and your geographical location [latitude].
Near the Equator: The sunrise time changes very little throughout the year, often just a few seconds.
Mid-Latitudes: The variation can be more pronounced, with changes ranging from about 1 to 2 minutes per day, around the equinoxes [March 21 & September 23] to more significant changes [up to 3 or 4 minutes], around the solstices [June 21 & December 21].
Higher Latitudes: In polar regions [66° 34' N or S], the variation can be extreme, where the sun may not rise at all, during the polar night, and may not set during the summer’s polar day [midnight sun].

Not true !

Due to the fact that the earth's orbit around the sun is an ellipse we have a thing called the 'equation of time'.

Assuming you are keeping GMT and are located at 0ºN/S, 0ºE/W sunrise will vary between 0545 and 0615 ( approximately) throughout the year.
EDITED to correct a little bit of finger trouble.

[MicHughV]

Whoa, one forgets that it is a different "time" elsewhere in the world. Consider that the US alone has 9 time zones, if you factor in far flung territories.

As one that has flown east to west and west to east many times, one must often contend with a 6 hour plus difference in time zones.
Not only that but interestingly, in doing so, the clock might say noon, but the body sez 6 pm or vice versa.

I've flown north to south and vice versa, which means I leave in summer and arrive in winter the next day, or vice versa.

I've read that it takes the body an hour per day to re-adjust to whatever time zone you may find yourself in, a fact I tend to go along with.

So it's not all cut and dried regarding time.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by 5BTM

Happy people don't measure time.

At sea, we liked to keep noon close to noon.

I live on dog (Labrador) time; pee time, feed me, pick up ****, play time.

Pretty much the same here, but we do it a 1/2-hr before you *.

*Most of Labrador is on Atlantic time. Most, but not all...

[Wotname]

You call it chaos, I call it living with the planet the way it is

..................

Standardized time has only around for about a 150 years, as a convenience for some........

I would speculate that all respondents to this thread would find standardised time is more than a convenience and chaos would ensure without it

I know the positioning supplied by my GPS goes haywire when time isn't standardised. Off shore, others may be using a more magic positioning system that doesn't rely on time

[El Pinguino]

Standard times, so I am led to believe, started in the UK with the coming of railways.
Timetables wouldn't work without standard time and the trains would not run on time.

Prior to trains and the electric telegraph most of the UK would have been just one stop short of Isla Chiloe time.

When the 'Beagle' called at Castro, Isla Chiloe, in the 1830's Charles Darwin observed that there was not a single timepiece in the town and the inhabitants just relied on some old bloke 'with a good sense of time'.

I've already told you about Zanzibar time.

[5BTM]

My third child were twins ( I was so looking forward to the fourth time..) and when the younger one went to Australia, for a short time he was older.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/article...-two-centuries

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Standard times, so I am led to believe, started in the UK with the coming of railways...

Before the late 1800s, it was commonplace for individual towns to specify a local time, many based on local noon solar zenith, or sunsets and sunrises. This meant that, if you travelled, from one town to another, you would, likely, have to update your personal timepiece, upon arrival. In fact, there were over 300 local times, throughout the United States, during this time.

Sir Sanford Fleming*, a Canadian Pacific Railway engineer, was the first person to propose the use of worldwide time zones, back in 1878.
His idea was to divide the world into 24 time zones, that were each 15 degrees of longitude apart.
The reason being, that the earth rotates 15 degrees, every hour, or 360º, in 24 hours.

The International Meridian Conference [which Fleming helped organize], in Washington DC, USA, adopted a proposal, in October 1884, to determine the location of the prime meridian* at Greenwich, England, which refers to zero degrees longitude, and that the 24 time zones, and Greenwich Mean Time, would be based off of this location.
* The prime meridian for longitude, and timekeeping, passes through the centre, of the transit instrument, at the Greenwich Observatory, in the United Kingdom.

Interestingly, many French maps showed zero degrees in Paris, for many years, despite the International Meridian Conference’s outcomes in 1884. GMT was the universal reference standard [all other times being stated as so many hours ahead or behind it], but the French continued to treat Paris as the prime meridian, until 1911.
Even so, the French defined their civil time as Paris Mean Time minus 9 minutes and 21 seconds. In other words, this was the same time as GMT.

* A few of Sir Sandford Fleming's other achievements:
Designed the first Canadian postage stamp. The three-penny stamp, issued in 1851 had a beaver on it (the national animal of Canada).
Designed an early in-line skate, in 1850.
Surveyed for the first railroad route across Canada.
Was the head engineer, for most of the Intercolonial Railway, and the Canadian Pacific Railway.

[El Pinguino]

The first use of the telegraph on a railway was in London in 1840.
https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/obj...tric-telegraph

'Standard times' started in the UK in the early 1850s.
I quote from the above Science Museum article.

'The Royal Observatory, Greenwich, provided the standard for 'London time', counting noon from the Sun's zenith over the 0° meridian.

In 1852, the timekeepers at Greenwich introduced equipment that transmitted accurate time signals throughout the country over the electric telegraph network.

By 1855 nearly all public authorities, such as churches and town halls, set their clocks to 'railway time', displayed on station clocks by station masters who adjusted them according to the signals from Greenwich.'

It took a while for some countries to accept the zones as agreed in the 1880s. As late as the 1960s Liberia was still keeping time on the longitude of Monrovia, the capital. LMT was 43m08s behind GMT.

Back to the sailorising side of things. Pre all this stuff navigators for many years calculated their longitudes from their departure points, be it Ushant or Madeira or where ever, so they would be ' Xº west of Madeira'.

I recall using charts of the Arabian Sea and thereabouts that had the note in the title block 'longitudes on this chart are based on Bombay Observatory being in such and such a longitude'.

Be forever thankful we have GMT and not PMT.

[GordMay]

England [United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland] has only one time zone, Greenwich Mean Time [GMT].
The whole of the UK, only, spans about 10° of longitude.
The planet has 24 time zones, of 15° each [more or less].