Daylight Saving Time (DST)

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Barbqranch

Senior Member
Location
Arcata, CA
Occupation
Plant maintenance electrician Semi-retired
A few years ago I bought a clock radio with lots of smarts. It is so smart I can set it to wake me up at a certain time, but only on week days.
  • :D
It is so smart it knows when daylight savings time starts and ends, so it automatically changes. Except it does it on the old date, not the new. So, instead of a clock I change twice a year, I now have one I have to change 4 times a year.

  • :roll:

 

Besoeker

Senior Member
Location
UK
How does the DST time change affect your business and/ or your personal life? Pros & cons are welcome. Just curious. Thanks!
This came up in another forum (shock horror!) where I'm a member.
I'd scrap the time change. We are a division of an international company and deal with other countries around the world. I'm writing this post at 8:20 am. It will be logged that way fro me. For you guys it may be around 04:00 or earlier. Your earlier move to DST this year than UK means that there is a change in the usual time differences for a couple of weeks.
As for calling it daylight saving time - well it doesn't change the daylight hours so it neither saves nor loses the number of daylight hours.
In short, I think it's a daft idea.
Personal opinion.
 

GoldDigger

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Placerville, CA, USA
Occupation
Retired PV System Designer
Maybe we should call it daylight exploitation time? Or maximum use of available daylight time?
Or we could just follow the British lead and call it Summer Time?
Then we could have PST half the year and PST the other half. :)

Tapatalk!
 

Smart $

Esteemed Member
Location
Ohio
How did we end up basing 24 hour timekeeping on civil midnight anyway?

If we based time on sunrise, there'd be no need to spring forward and fall back. People did it for millennia without a problem. Some animals still do... ;)
 

Besoeker

Senior Member
Location
UK
How did we end up basing 24 hour timekeeping on civil midnight anyway?

If we based time on sunrise, there'd be no need to spring forward and fall back. People did it for millennia without a problem. Some animals still do... ;)
Very droll.........:p
 

LEO2854

Esteemed Member
Location
Ma
How did we end up basing 24 hour timekeeping on civil midnight anyway?

If we based time on sunrise, there'd be no need to spring forward and fall back. People did it for millennia without a problem. Some animals still do... ;)

Because the mid point of the day is high noon..:D
 

hurk27

Senior Member
Growing up in south Florida I can remember going to bed at 10:00pm in the summer and it would be still daylight, but going to school in the winter (if you can call it that down there) and it would be dark, for some areas of the country it makes sense, and others it doesn't take Alaska, why even bother with DST?

But it does has its advantages, the old time farmers who worked from sun up till sun down would not have been affected, but those of us who punch a time clock or work for ourselves it can be nice to have daylight when we go out to load our trucks for a job, here in the winter its dark both going to work and coming home if after 5:00pm, thats not much daylight, but to shift the time so its light in the morning when I go to work can be much nicer, as it seems I'm more awake and ready to get to work instead of dragging because it is still dark, trying to load the van and making sure you got everything picked up off the ground is so much nicer when its light.

At one time the last company I worked for we would even do 8:00am starts just to have the extra light, but some builders didn't like us showing up that extra hour later.
 

GoldDigger

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Placerville, CA, USA
Occupation
Retired PV System Designer
The organic circuit implementing the photo detector and the alarm annunciator in one assembly is called a rooster.
Also known to some as an alarm cock.

Tapatalk!
 

Smart $

Esteemed Member
Location
Ohio
The organic circuit implementing the photo detector and the alarm annunciator in one assembly is called a rooster.
Also known to some as an alarm cock.
I was going to say the clock part would be unnecessary for those getting up at sunrise... but I like your reply much, much better. :thumbsup:
 

Besoeker

Senior Member
Location
UK
The organic circuit implementing the photo detector and the alarm annunciator in one assembly is called a rooster.
Also known to some as an alarm cock.

Tapatalk!
I'm with Snart$ on that. Excellent!
In UK we call a rooster a cockerel or a cock so it would be a cock clock.......:D
(nothing rude but I wonder if the word filter will allow that...)

Unfortunately, to function as a modern, or even a not so modern society, we need a common system. Turning up an hour late for a scheduled flight because the rooster was a bit lazy or the darkness fooled it that day just wouldn't cut the mustard.....

We humans have been measuring time for a very long time. And interesting article with an explanation of the 24-hour day:

http://gizmodo.com/5926491/why-there-are-24-hours-in-a-day

Water clocks have been around for about three and a half thousand years so time keeping isn't exactly a new science. For sure, we are better at it than we have ever been in terms of accuracy. Quartz crystal oscillators were pretty good compared to mechanical escapements. The one in my office is under a minute fast. A few parts per million accuracy at worst. And maybe I just set it incorrectly at the last time change.

Now we have atomic clocks. The clock in my car, for example, is accurate to within a second or maybe better for all I can tell and automatically updates between GMT and BST.
Do we need such accuracy? For the most part, probably not. But it's a convenience to never have to adjust it.
 

gadfly56

Senior Member
Location
New Jersey
Occupation
Professional Engineer, Fire & Life Safety
My morning commute is west to east. Office start time is 0800. Right at the point that DST is currently engaged is where the sun is finally high enough to be above the sun visor. Then BANG! Back to staring into the glare. Previously DST was about the first week in April. I remember because in college I was with the Dramatic Society. Our spring show was about the first weekend in April, and the all-night cast party on Saturday was cut short an hour due to DST.

My eight year old has a problem with it. Higher frequency of night time accidents for a couple of weeks. Both boys have a tendency to both sleep in and get up early. Don't know how THAT works.

The dogs don't seem to care.

Our "smart" clock isn't atomic, but they put in both the new and old DST schedules, in case they decided to flip back. I know there's been talk.

Interestingly most people think it's about farming, but according to timeanddate.com the whole thing was about the saving energy during WWI.

Here in the New York area, we are right about at the center of the Eastern zone.
 

GoldDigger

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Placerville, CA, USA
Occupation
Retired PV System Designer
For the most part farmers and particularly dairymen opposed it because the cows followed the sun time while the milk pickup and train schedules jumped by an hour. Result: a lot of unhappy cows.
(This was before refrigeration was universal.)

Tapatalk!
 

jaylectricity

Senior Member
Location
Massachusetts
Occupation
licensed journeyman electrician
I forgot that it was DST time. I went to visit my mom in ABQ last weekend and was sore to realize that I was being robbed of an hour with her.

So I just slept a few hours less and beat the system!
 

kwired

Electron manager
Location
NE Nebraska
Growing up in south Florida I can remember going to bed at 10:00pm in the summer and it would be still daylight, but going to school in the winter (if you can call it that down there) and it would be dark, for some areas of the country it makes sense, and others it doesn't take Alaska, why even bother with DST?

But it does has its advantages, the old time farmers who worked from sun up till sun down would not have been affected, but those of us who punch a time clock or work for ourselves it can be nice to have daylight when we go out to load our trucks for a job, here in the winter its dark both going to work and coming home if after 5:00pm, thats not much daylight, but to shift the time so its light in the morning when I go to work can be much nicer, as it seems I'm more awake and ready to get to work instead of dragging because it is still dark, trying to load the van and making sure you got everything picked up off the ground is so much nicer when its light.

At one time the last company I worked for we would even do 8:00am starts just to have the extra light, but some builders didn't like us showing up that extra hour later.
If you start an hour later you will end an hour later, just may mean if it is light when you start it may be dark when you end, at least in late December anyway.

Geographic location does play a part in what will be experienced. When I once went to central America I noticed there was about 12 maybe 13 hours of daylight, and this was in July when we are used to long daylight hours here. It just wasn't a sunrise to sunset thing - it was how many hours there was natural light. Because of the geographic location there was not much time before or after sunrise and sunset where we still had some light. It is kind of that way in winter months here, but not that way in summer months.

My bigger adjustment though was getting used to the fact that shadows cast from the sun in midday were to the south and not the north. The sun was nearly overhead but was a little to the north instead of to the south.
 

Besoeker

Senior Member
Location
UK
If you start an hour later you will end an hour later, just may mean if it is light when you start it may be dark when you end, at least in late December anyway.

Geographic location does play a part in what will be experienced. When I once went to central America I noticed there was about 12 maybe 13 hours of daylight, and this was in July when we are used to long daylight hours here. It just wasn't a sunrise to sunset thing - it was how many hours there was natural light. Because of the geographic location there was not much time before or after sunrise and sunset where we still had some light. It is kind of that way in winter months here, but not that way in summer months.

My bigger adjustment though was getting used to the fact that shadows cast from the sun in midday were to the south and not the north. The sun was nearly overhead but was a little to the north instead of to the south.
Yes, geographical location matters.
I was born and brought up fairly far north in Scotland. I now live in the south east of England, over 500 miles to the south.
Even in that relatively short distance, there is a marked difference between the sunrise and sunset times. In summer in Scotland it was light enough to work outside until 11:00 pm. Not so down south.

I've worked in places near the equator and one of the things that struck me was the pretty abrupt transition from daylight to darkness. Very little of what we Scots would call "gloaming". The period between sunset and darkness. In my part of Scotland I recall it being hours. I remember the parents of us kids often getting worried because we were out playing so late. We simply lost track of time as the light just gradually faded. In some ways a magical time of day - or maybe that was just rose tinted - it was a very, very long time ago......:)
 
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