Daylight savings starts for North America this week – at least for those states and provinces that use it. Being spring time – they will have moved their clocks one hour forward as of last Sunday. So if you are phoning a friend or relative, be aware that what was 9 pm last week for them is now 10 pm. Of course, not all places choose to follow daylight savings – almost the entire province of Saskatchewan in Canada ignores daylight savings – so shares the same time as Alberta during the summer months and the same time as Manitoba during the winter months. In the States, Arizona also ignores the one hour time change, apart from its north western corner which does observe it!
For many countries daylight savings was implemented during the First and Second World Wars as an emergency wartime measure to save electricity and fuel. However, its use has continued since World War One in many areas, mainly during the summer months. It was introduced at various times and in various ways in different countries – including the rather haphazard approach in the US where there was no federal law regarding daylight saving time, so states and localities were free to choose whether to observe it, and could choose when it began and ended. By 1962, the transportation industry found the lack of consistency in time confusing enough to push for federal regulation – and a federal law was passed in 1966.
Daylight savings or Summer Time is most likely to be observed in mid- northern and southern latitudes, where it is an attempt to match the solar day to human activity. In Ireland there is a noticeable difference in the times for sunrise in summer compared to winter. In June the Sun rises just after 4 am – that’s without Summer Time – with Summer Time it rises after 5 am, whereas on Christmas Day the sun is only rising at 8:40 am. The further west you are in Ireland, the later the Sun will rise – this is because the whole island of Ireland is in the same time zone, but experiences different local solar times as determined from the Sun.
In Canada, Sir Sandford Fleming is recognised as the inventor of Standard Time, from the work he did in the late 1800s. The story goes that he was interested in promoting the 24 hour clock and 24 standard time zones for the whole world because he had arrived 12 hours early for a train in Bundoran in 1876. The timetable had been misprinted, but he concluded that the whole numbering system was wrong! He proposed using Greenwich as the prime meridian for his new time zones –because much of the shipping in the world used Greenwich as the starting point for measuring longitude. He was instrumental in convening the 1884 International Prime Meridian Conference in Washington, at which the system of international standard time – still in use today – was adopted. Of course the idea had its detractors – the French continued to use a meridian based on Paris – that was nine minutes and twenty-two seconds ahead of that of Greenwich and the Netherlands used Amsterdam time – nineteen minutes and thirty-two seconds ahead of Greenwich.
In Ireland – we will turn the clocks forward on March 25th – and as a Canadian I can go back to my standard knowledge that a phone call to family has an 8 hour time difference!
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