Author: Scott (Page 94 of 104)

I have no time to blog today, because I lost an hour in my sleep due to a man named William Willett.  This guy ->

So instead, because I have miles to go before I sleep, I will give you the inspiration words of Willett himself as he argues for the need to disturb everyone’s days by an hour:

Everyone appreciates the long light evenings. Everyone laments their shrinkage as the days grow shorter, and nearly everyone has given utterance to a regret that the clear bright light of early mornings, during Spring and Summer months, is so seldom seen or used.

Nevertheless, standard time remains so fixed, that for nearly half the year the sun shines upon the land for several hours each day while we are asleep, and is rapidly nearing the horizon, having already passed its western limit, when we reach home after the work of the day is over. Under the most favourable circumstances, there then remains only a brief spell of declining daylight in which to spend the short period of leisure at our disposal.

Now, if some of the hours of wasted sunlight could be withdrawn from the beginning and added to the end of the day, how many advantages would be gained by all, and in particular by those who spend in the open air, when light permits them to do so, whatever time they have at their command after the duties of the day have been discharged.

By a simple expedient these advantages can be secured. If we will reduce the length of four Sundays by 20 minutes, a loss of which practically no one would be conscious, we shall have 8o minutes more daylight after 6 p.m. every day during May, June, July and August, and an avenge of 45 minutes more every day during April and September.

I therefore venture to propose that at 2 a.m. on each of four Sunday mornings in April, standard time shall advance 20 minutes; and on each of four Sundays in September, shall recede 20 minutes, or in other words that for eight Sundays of 24 hours each, we shall substitute four, each 20 minutes less than 24 hours, and four each 20 minutes more than 24 hours. (Another means of arriving at approximately the same end would be to alter the clock thirty minutes on only two or three Sundays.) This is the whole cost of the scheme. We lose nothing, and gain substantially. Having made up our minds to be satisfied, on four occasions, with a Sunday of 23 hours and 40 minutes, the advantages aimed at follow automatically without any trouble whatever; everything will go on just as it does now, except that as the later hours of the day come round, they will bring more light with them. Those who have travelled by sea east or west, will remember how easily they accommodated themselves to the frequent alterations of time on board ship. They simply adjusted their watches, attended to the engagements of the day in correspondence therewith, and quickly dismissed from their minds all recollection of the alterations which had been made. If this can take place at sea day after day for several weeks without discomfort, may not a similar operation be possible on land?

Note that his original suggestion was actually a more gradual change over multiple weeks.  I think I might find that less jarring than an entire hour in one day, but it would mean remembering to change your clocks every weekend for a month.

That is, if you even have clocks that don’t change automatically anymore.  Luddites.