“How did it get so late so soon?”
― Dr. Seuss
Once upon a time—I mean in 1895, there was an amateur entomologist, living in New Zealand named George Vernon Hudson. Vern liked bugs—a lot. On a typical day, after work was done, he would eagerly gather insects so he could study them. His obsession with bugs became so intense, in fact, he eventually became very upset in late fall and early winter because daylight was shorter and it cut his time short with his bugs.
Vern was so upset he wrote a paper explaining that if we all set our clocks forward two hours, he would be able to have more time after work to collect bugs. He presented the paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society. They replied with a thoughtful “hmmm.” And then everyone told Vern to go pound sand. Vern responded with a second paper in 1898, which everyone ignored, hoping that Vern would go back to being preoccupied with bugs.
Fast forward seven years later to London, England. An outdoors-man and general busybody named William Willett was taking his typical early morning ride on horseback one summer day. He’d been noticing for some time, that people were asleep when the sun was shining, and that morning it made him very cranky.
So Willett spent the remainder of his life trying to convince Parliament to pass a law to make his lazy-ass countrymen get out of bed an hour earlier. A Member of Parliament, Robert Peirce, then introduced a bill to the House of Commons to do exactly that. The English, being more polite than the New Zealanders, placated Pierce by appointing a committee to “look into the idea.” This was their way of telling Pierce and Willett to go pound sand.
Then came WWI and the Germans and Austrians believed they could conserve coal if they set their clocks ahead one hour and began doing so on April 30, 1916. I understand that they also believed in Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and that they were members of a superior ethnic strain of humans. Now everybody thinks that the Germans have all the great ideas, so the rest of Europe soon played copycat and all chimed in “Me too.”
Not to be outdone, the U.S. followed suit and adopted Daylight Saving Time (DST) in 1918. Then the war ended a year later and everyone thought “This is stupid” and stopped observing DST. Well not everybody, but Congress dropped it, leaving it to local jurisdictions, despite President Wilson throwing a temper tantrum and attempting to veto the bill repealing federally mandated DST. Congress overrode his veto and told Wilson to go pound sand.
Then, along came WWII, and President Roosevelt told the American people to go pound sand, convincing Congress to institute DST year round until the war came to an end. Then we went back to allowing local jurisdictions to decide whether DST was a good idea. Everyone decided there had been enough sand pounding for a while, until Nixon came along.
President Nixon inherited a war in Southeast Asia and an energy crisis, neither of which he was competent to manage. So he and the U.S. Congress told the Viet Cong and the American people to go pound sand, setting into motion modern day DST and sending a bunch of kids to go kill people in Southeast Asia.
Several Presidents since Nixon have also told the American people to go pound sand and have introduced and signed legislation to shorten the duration of Standard Time even further.
And that’s why you had to get up an hour earlier this morning. Because people in government like telling everyone to go pound sand.
Guy-o
P.S.
Fun stuff to know and tell about DST
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time
