Apparently he came up with idea as more of an amusement, than a serious suggestion.

" At the age of 78, in a moment of whimsy, Benjamin Franklin wrote An Economical Project, a discourse on the thrift of natural versus artificial lighting. He included several funny regulations that Paris might adopt..."

https://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/franklin.html

I am so sick and tired of doing the time shift dance twice a year.  I really wish my government would pick one and stick with it.  At this point in my life, I don't even care which one they pick, just pick one and be done with it.

That's really funny about Ben Franklin and Parisians.

Yeah, Fisterra Spain for example is about as far west as Killarney Ireland, but Spain is on Central European Time, same as the eastern extreme of Poland, quite a big span. So it also matters where one lives within one's time zone. I think financial traders in SF and LA generally get up early to follow Wall Street office hours. I think the major exchanges in London, Frankfurt, Zurich, Milan also keep the same hours. But schools or smaller businesses should be able to set their hours locally. We open for business at 7:47 am, because I like the Boeing 747 and it's a good time to get started in this neck of the woods. So really seems like it'd be better to quit changing the clocks back and forth each year. Or at the very least Europe and North America should meet halfway and change their clocks on the same weekend. But better yet, just stop this nonsense altogether.

There is a good effort underway n congress to get rid of the time change in the USA.  What I don't like about it is that they want to make DST the permanent standard, so we move forward one hour and stay there all year.  Personally, I like standard time.

Anyway, it's time to get rid of this outdated time policy.

Dave

Edited March 10, 20242 yr by dave2013

Agree for the British Isles, too. Its a pain in the neck. Especially so for those of us that don't sleep well and can do without the disruption.

In the UK it came into effect in 1916 due to the cost of energy usage during the war. The excuse now is that it makes better use of daylight hours. They call it daylight saving. 

 

Edited March 10, 20242 yr by martin-w

4 hours ago, Antipodeslonghaul said:

Fisterra Spain for example is about as far west as Killarney Ireland, but Spain is on Central European Time, same as the eastern extreme of Poland

The east coast of Greenland is weird. Most of it is GMT, even though about 80% should be in GMT-1 and 20% should be in GMT-2.

3 hours ago, martin-w said:

 

In the UK it came into effect in 1916 due to the cost of energy usage during the war. The excuse now is that it makes better use of daylight hours. They call it daylight saving. 

 

Same thing in America. The time swap nonsense started here too during WWI. Perhaps the guy who shot Archduke Ferdinand was a time traveler who wanted the whole world to adopt Daylight Savings Time.

18 hours ago, dave2013 said:

There is a good effort underway n congress to get rid of the time change in the USA.  What I don't like about it is that they want to make DST the permanent standard, so we move forward one hour and stay there all year.  Personally, I like standard time.

Anyway, it's time to get rid of this outdated time policy.

Dave

There has been efforts in congress to end this time change scheme for at least the past 20 years, maybe longer.

The problem is 50% want Standard Time year round and 50% want Daylight Saving Time year round so there will always be an impasse. The obvious solution is to to have a new standard time which is halfway between the two. I see several time zones on the map which already incorporate half hour differences, e.g. Newfoundland is GMT minus 3½. One time zone is even GMT plus 12¾, so it's not a new concept.

21 hours ago, dmwalker said:

The east coast of Greenland is weird. Most of it is GMT, even though about 80% should be in GMT-1 and 20% should be in GMT-2.

Argentina fares also as bad. While everything is UTC-3, several zones should be UTC-4. Furthermore, some zones on the Andes (Bariloche, Calafate, Mendoza) should be UTC-5. I always say in jest that down here we're in a perpetual DST. That was after some time fooling around between UTC-4 and UTC-2 😵

2 hours ago, dmwalker said:

The problem is 50% want Standard Time year round and 50% want Daylight Saving Time year round so there will always be an impasse. The obvious solution is to to have a new standard time which is halfway between the two. I see several time zones on the map which already incorporate half hour differences, e.g. Newfoundland is GMT minus 3½. One time zone is even GMT plus 12¾, so it's not a new concept.

 

Standard time is better for health apparently. 

40 minutes ago, martin-w said:

 

Standard time is better for health apparently. 

I feel it is. Unless maybe there's a showdown at high noon.

Here in Hawaii we never switch, but now East Coast is 6 hours ahead instead of 5 so getting business done is more difficult.

 

scott s.

.

 

Here in Britain sticking to BST over winter was tried many years ago. It wasn’t popular the further north you went.

The further from the equator the bigger the difference between winter and summer daylight hours. Here in Cheshire we get just under 8 hours in December but over 17 hours in June.

The long summer evenings are great for barbecues but in winter it not setting light until after 9am In Scotland meant switching back to GMT was essential.

With the US much further south I don’t see the need for DST.