#A WORD FOR SAVING TIME FREE#

The Soviet Union first observed daylight savings time in the spring of 1930 after an edict by Josef Stalin. Russia has had its own issues with managing DST, as have most other nations.

(See ' Permanent Daylight Saving Time? Might Boost Tourism, Efficiency.') 'That same year, Pentagon officials were two hours late for an important military conference in Alaska because no one knew what time it was out there on the Russian border,' Downing added. 'Tito's plane landed in a Virginia town that hadn't advanced its clocks with the rest of the state, so nobody was there to greet him.' in 1963, his welcome was botched because of daylight savings time, Downing reported. When Yugoslavia's president, Marshal Tito, visited the U.S. Governments have had just as much trouble keeping track of time changes as everyone else. no one can really explain why,' Downing said, adding that the first real attempt to quantify the supposed energy savings of DST occurred in 1966. 'We've all obeyed this dictum for a hundred years, and. (Related: 'Extended Daylight Saving Time Not an Energy Saver?') observed year-round DST for the same reasons.īut it turns out that these sweeping time changes-mostly intended to save energy-weren't based on any evidence. It started in Germany, then caught on in a number of nations that wanted to reduce lighting demand and save coal for the war effort. Why did this tempest of timekeeping confusion begin in the first place?ĭaylight savings time was first realized on a grand scale during World War I. Naval Observatory, the country's center for strategic timekeeping, announced that the dissent over DST had made the world's greatest economic and military superpower the world's worst timekeeper, Downing noted.ĭaylight Savings Was Based on Assumptions Things were so confused that in 1965 the director of the U.S. In fact, somebody even found a Minneapolis office building in which the different floors of the building were observing different time zones because they were the offices of different counties.' Paul was on one time, Minneapolis was on a different time, and Duluth was on Wisconsin time. 'Of the 71 that did, there were at least 20 different adoption dates. 'Fifty-nine did not observe daylight saving. 'In 1965 there were 130 cities in the country with populations of 100,000 or more,' Downing explained.

Uniform Time Act of 1966, DST was often observed very locally-and chaos was the result. If these exceptions seem confusing, the situation was far worse 50 years ago, according to Tufts University professor Michael Downing, author of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time.

#A WORD FOR SAVING TIME FREE#

state and territory is free to ignore daylight savings time, so residents of Arizona (except those on the Navajo Nation), Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and other territories won't move their clocks this weekend. Here are some strange-but-true facts you might not know about daylight savings time.Įach U.S. (Related: ' Time to Move On? The Case Against Daylight Saving Time.') The annual adventure in altered timekeeping has produced some entertaining and exasperating situations over the past century. Time will fall back to standard time again on Sunday, November 1, when DST ends. Many Americans will spring forward an hour to mark the beginning of daylight savings time (DST)-also known as daylight saving time-at 2 a.m. For most of the United States, this weekend sees the return of clock confusion-and heated debate.

A word for saving time