
The Waste of Daylight – William Willett's Original Daylight Saving Time Proposal - vba
http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/willett.html
======
upofadown
>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, ...

This sounds a bit closer to the ideal of just working with respect to sun
rise. It eliminates the abrupt transition twice a year and allows the
adjustment to be greater or less than an hour which is good because the useful
adjustment changes with latitude.

These days we could just skip the discrete changes all together and just use
solar time directly.

~~~
Retric
Computationally it's not a problem, but other issues abound.

We want time zones to coordinate across large areas. A similar issue exists
because the day has different length the further you are from the north pole.
With southern summers and northern winters occurring at the same time.

~~~
tzs
If we can assume that clocks have decent computing power, and if we can assume
that people that need to do time calculations across significant longitude
differences have access to decent interactive computing power (smart phones,
tablets, desktops), then I think some kind of dual time system might be
workable.

Clocks would display both a "World Time" and a "Zone Time".

The World Time would probably simply be UTC.

For coordinating across significant longitude differences World Time would be
used.

The Zone Time applies to a region similar to a current time zone, and is an
idealized solar time, adjusted so that sunrise each day is around 6:00 AM LZT
(Local Zone Time).

Schools, stores, most offices, mass transit routes that are mostly in the
zone, theaters, meals, and similar things would base their schedules on LZT.
So office hours, for example, would typically be 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM LZT, year
around.

This would let most people work on a schedule that syncs well to the Sun,
which should have tangible benefits for many people. There would be no going
to work or school in the dark, and in summer the longer daylight time would
automatically come after work/school.

This needs to assume people have decent access to interactive computing power
because it would complicate planning things that involve interactions between
LZT and World Time, especially when planning events weeks or months ahead.

(And yes, under this system 6:00 AM LZT from one day to 6:00 AM LZT the next
day would not be exactly 24 hours. So? Things for which that matters would be
scheduled on World Time, not on LZT).

~~~
fyfy18
It's an interesting proposal, but it seems like it would work best for more
equatorial regions. In my not too northern location, that would mean in the
summer I get up 5 hours earlier than in the winter.

~~~
upofadown
The idea isn't that _everyone_ gets up at sunrise. People in equatorial
regions would be the last people to care about this stuff. DST is not an issue
there. People in more polar regions tend to not care that much about daylight
in the winter. There is so little of it and it is so cold that it makes no
difference. There is so much light in the summer that it makes little
difference when you get up. People in polar regions might actually like a sort
of anti-DST offset so they can get some darkness in the evening in the summer.

It is people in the temperate latitudes that tend to care.

------
SubiculumCode
For me practically, I hate this time change. It is already getting dark a
little after 5PM. Now it is definitely dark by 5PM. I work in a fairly
windowless office. Not seeing the sun is depressing. I like having a few hours
of sun after work, psychologically.

------
dahart
I love checking out daylight charts for weird places like Iceland or Svalbard.
[https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/norway/longyearbyen](https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/norway/longyearbyen)

I didn't know the original proposal was to do it in multiple small shifts, nor
that it included an energy savings argument.

Most of my life I thought I didn't like daylight saving time. Then recently I
looked at the daylight chart
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time#/media/Fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time#/media/File:Greenwich_GB_DaylightChart.png))
and really imagined what it would be like without daylight saving time, and I
changed my mind.

If I stayed on summer time all year, then in the winter sunrise would be
around 9am, and I'd have to commute in the dark. If I stayed on winter time,
then in the summer the sun would be up at 5am and down at 8pm. On a normal
work schedule, I'd miss the morning time and wish for more sun in the evening.

~~~
fyfy18
DST works pretty well for London and the south of England, but if you go
somewhere more north, say Aberdeen, the sun doesn't rise until nearly 9am in
the winter and sets before 3:30pm. [0] In the summer it's light enough to
drive without lights from 4am - 11pm. Shifting either of those times by one
hour to maintain the same time zone all year around work make barely any
different to most people.

On mainland Europe it's even worse, the sun rises 1.5 hours later in the west
of Spain compared to the east of Poland, yet they all share the same timezone.

[0]
[https://www.gaisma.com/en/location/aberdeen.html](https://www.gaisma.com/en/location/aberdeen.html)

~~~
dahart
Yeah, agreed. There are definitely places where daylight saving time doesn't
make that much sense. Aberdeen doesn't have an official night time for 3.5
months of the year, or an astronomical twilight for 2 months.
[https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/uk/aberdeen](https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/uk/aberdeen)
Still, without it, in June the sun rises at 3am and sets at 9pm, it still
seems like trading the morning hour for one in the evening would be a net
positive for most people, even if it's small. Unless I was on a strange work
schedule, I would definitely sleep through the first few hours of sun in the
morning, and always be awake for the sunset.

I suddenly started to wonder, if we care about daylight, whether work
schedules might make more sense if they started at 8 am rather than 9, just to
be more symmetric around noon. Or even 7am, if we're preserving evening
daylight. But I dunno, that sounds too early. ;)

------
focom
After moving to a sunny place in the country I noticed how it affected my
mood, so I think that every scheme to add natural light to our day is great
for mental health. That's why stripping DST in Europe is in my opinion
unfortunate.

~~~
hnarn
Surely there's better ways to make sure people get more sunlight than
arbitrarily changing the measurement of time?

~~~
paganel
Good luck with changing the start working hours for most of the companies from
an entire continent from around 8-9 in the morning to about 7 in the morning,
so that people could have the chance of catching an hour of daylight in the
winter by going home at around 3 or 4 in the afternoon. That's not going to
happen anytime soon.

~~~
toast0
You could legislate that. Or you could simply legislate government office and
school hours and wait for private industry to match the behavior.

~~~
tzs
The problem with the "change the time we do things" approach is that we write
down times in permanent or semi-permanent places. Buildings have hours of
operation signs. Streets have lane restriction and parking hours signs. We
print schedules for buses, planes, boats, and trains.

If we just change so we do all of these things an hour earlier in summer we
either have to change a whole bunch of signs and other printed material twice
a year, or we just have to remember that we need to mentally take an hour off
the printed time during that time of year.

The former would be a major hassle and possibly an expensive one, and the
later would confuse a lot of people for days or weeks after the switches.

Clocks, on the other hand, are _designed_ to be changed.

If we want things to start an hour earlier in summer, and we want that to
apply to everything, than implementing that by moving the clocks an hour
forward is easier, cheaper, and less confusing.

The main hassle with changing the clocks is that there are so many of the damn
things, although I think we may be getting past that.

(I say this is the main hassle, rather than the hassle of dealing with
biological rhythms getting messed up for a while around the time changes
because this post is about how, if we are going to have DST, it should be
implemented--change schedules or change clocks. The biology thing is the same
under both, so is not relevant in this comment)

At one time, say before the 1970s, it wasn't much of an issue because we
didn't actually have all that many clocks. A typical family might have wall
clocks in the kitchen and living room, table top alarm clocks in the bedrooms,
and watches.

It was in the '70s and '80s that clocks started appearing everywhere, and
worse, no two seemed to have the same mechanism for setting them and the
mechanisms were usually almost impossible to figure out without the
instructions. DST changing could be a frustrating evening of alternating
trying to guess how to set a clock and searching through every place you might
have left the manual.

But now, although everything still has a clock whether it needs it or not,
those clocks are more and more likely to be self-setting. I think I have 15
clocks in my house and garage right now, and only 3 of them did not handle
this morning's return to PST from PDT automatically. (And all three are or are
in old things that if bought today probably would automatically handle the
time change).

~~~
toast0
Bus and other transit schedules already change frequently, often related to
changes in demand that may also be seasonal.

I have certainly seen hours of operation signs with separate summer and other
hours -- they generally also indicate when they think summer begins and ends.
Even if you did change the hours twice a year, that allows you to adjust for
changing demand as well -- you don't always need to keep doing what has always
been done.

I personally don't think parking and lane restriction hours are that
sensitive, just set them to cover the full range of high traffic times.

Most of your self setting equipment is likely not to adjust to changing dst
dates when next we add more days to DST.

------
jve
> This is the whole cost of the scheme. We lose nothing, and gain
> substantially.

Well not in todays connected world.

> For Continental trains only will special time tables be required, one for
> April, a second for May, June, July and August, and a third for September

Yep, more like it.

I think DST today is less relevant. Light is cheap. I dont actually need
candles. Cities and towns also have lights. Today most power is being used by
manufacuring, be it at day or at night. I dont think savings is relevant here.

Dont get me wrong - I love daylight. But I enjoy that we @ europe will get rid
of DST. I just hope we get to stay in summer time :)

~~~
LeoPanthera
Am I the only one that thinks staying in summer time is insane?

The clock face is not arbitrary. Midday is the middle of the day. Midnight is
the middle of the night. (To the nearest hour.) If we abandon these
conventions, anything left is entirely arbitrary, and having time zones at all
seems like a huge complication vs a single global time zone.

We can all get more light in the “evening” by shifting the conventional hours
for work and life backwards a bit.

Abandoning timekeeping conventions instead just so that we can start work at
some arbitrary number on the clock seems crazy.

~~~
throwaway080383
I'm not sure if you were serious, but I actually think completely getting rid
of timezones is not that crazy of an idea. It would take some getting used to,
but naively I don't think it'd be any harder than say, switching to metric in
the US.

That is, I like the idea in principle, but I know it'll never happen.

~~~
hyperpape
Getting rid of timezones is actually a very crazy idea:
[https://qntm.org/abolish](https://qntm.org/abolish).

~~~
yen223
Has anyone pointed out how flawed that first argument is?

If you're going to argue that Google can solve the problem of "what time is it
over there" in our current system, then Google can solve the problem of "what
times are office hours over there" too.

~~~
hyperpape
This is addressed, at length, in the piece.

------
danschumann
No more dst. No more timezones. What happens when we colonize Mars? We need to
switch to star dates.

------
johnminter
Shifting the clocks is an idea that adds a lot of cost and questionable
benefits. We have the daylight hours that our location's geography provides.
Why not simply set the time zone boundaries such that the location is closest
to having the daylight centered around noon and leave the clocks alone. Having
changing time zones causes costs in updating all the software.

------
LeoPanthera
Am I the only one that thinks staying in summer time is insane?

The clock face is not arbitrary. Midday is the middle of the day. Midnight is
the middle of the night. (To the nearest hour.) If we abandon these
conventions, anything left is entirely arbitrary, and having time zones at all
seems like a huge complication vs a single global time zone.

We can all get more light in the “evening” by shifting the conventional hours
for work and life backwards a bit. Abandoning timekeeping conventions instead
just so that we can start work at some arbitrary number on the clock seems
crazy.

