How Daylight-Saving Time Works

You know, ol' Ben Franklin was JOKING when he proposed DST! Read "An Economical Project" sometime; it's hilarious.

Sure, he talked about setting clocks back. He also proposed firing cannons in the street, and taxing window shades and candle wax, to wake up the lazy Frenchmen (and certain American ambassadors) who played chess 'til midnight and slept 'til noon.

I've heard various reasons for "daylight saving" time, over the years, including: It was started by the farmers so they could have more light and ; it was started to give the school children more light in the morning to catch the bus but I've never heard the WWI reason or the current rationale for saving energy. As far as I can tell, none of them make any sense. In fact I sense there is some other reason that hasn't surfaced yet or that the policy makers are like sheep and just go along with it without analyzing or questions the motives of the ones pushing the idea. Since, none of these reasons make any sense, someone please give me one that does. I think it's the most ridiculous ritual we have. People aren't going to have any more sunlight in the summer by starting one hour later. The daylight exposure range in expanded in the summer, thus starts earlier and ends later--so what! Starting an hour later actually reduces the amount of daylight by one hour. It should be called "daylight losing" time.

Well, the Kaiser Wilhelm Germans were the first to start with this bienniel clock fetish, and their rationale was to save energy/resources and maximize the use of natural light.

OK, so why don't change the hours you do things and leave the clocks alone?

That's actually the question of the day. Why don't we just have winter/summer hours instead of going through the stupid self-deception of changing clocks?

If the Kaiser was doing this in the spring and summer, again, I don't get how he thought he was saving any energy. Like I said, the light range is broader--earlier sun and later sun. Where would the energy savings be in eliminating an hour of light in the am and another in the pm? It seems to me that energy could be saved by eliminating an hour in the am and pm during the fall and winter monthes, if at any time, due to the reduction in light hour range--unless you live near the equator where it wouldn't make any difference. This would give us northerners a 6 hour work day. Now, wouldn't that make more sense?

Many people might want to turn off the automatic time adjustment on their computers if they are not sure they have all there Windows updates and set their computer date/time manually at bedtime on 3-10 in the US.