A history of daylight saving time Tick of the clock

One night in August 1966, I drove into St. Louis at nine o’clock. Or was it 10? Hard to say which, because some of the clocks visible from the street said nine and some said 10. Such was the confusion about daylight saving time (DST) that year.

It’s possible to attribute the concept of DST to Benjamin Franklin. When he wasn’t inventing stuff or thinking up quotable aphorisms, Franklin amused himself by positing novel ideas to flummox his compatriots. Thus he introduced the notion of seasonal time change way back in 1784. Ahead of his time, some might say.

But he didn’t pursue it. Given that it was so recently a time to try men’s souls, he may have thought better of trying their patience as well.

We could go back even further to when — as we see in the 10th chapter of Joshua — God made the sun stand still. For about a whole day! God doesn’t fool with mere hours.

The United States first imposed DST in 1918, when some expert determined that turning on lights in pitch darkness in the morning requires less fuel than doing so in the evening. Citizens cooperated because the time change supported The Great War.

When the war ended, so did DST. It reappeared during World War II, after which it fell by the wayside again.

Until 1966. Even in the midst of our involvement in Vietnam and civil unrest at home, LBJ found the time to tinker with our clocks, and DST became uniform and mandatory — except for isolated holdouts, including a chunk of Indiana (and apparently some parts of St. Louis), whose daylight time remained unsaved.

Confusing times indeed. But Tennessee Ernie Ford, a then-popular singer, clarified the concept. He reportedly likened DST to cutting a strip off of the top of a blanket and sewing it onto the bottom — to make the blanket longer.

All of this occurred before we started using massive quantities of electricity day and night for heating/cooling, running appliances, and charging our devices and cars — which has made the use of energy for lighting relatively negligible.

Meanwhile, we adjusted to changing times. The catchy “spring forward, fall back” emerged to help us remember which way to turn the clocks. And the introduction of battery-operated smoke detectors reminded us to change our clocks and batteries at the same time.

Every once in a while a “new” suggestion pops up that we just keep DST all year long. Typically, this notion comes from those who are not old enough to remember 1974-75, when we stayed with DST all winter.

As it turned out, people didn’t like going to work or school in the dark. Some areas also reported increased muggings of people — mostly women — on their way to work. We promptly abandoned year-round DST and went back to changing our clocks.

But the issue continues to arise every few years — like, well, clockwork. And we noodle over the pros and cons of keeping DST year-round or of ditching it altogether. Then something important comes along to push the question to a back burner, where it simmers for a while only to bubble up again. And again.

Maybe someday it will be settled, one way or the other, and we’ll have DST all the time or not at all. We’ll be free at last of the onerous task of changing clocks — along with the attendant health and productivity challenges that get trotted out every time the subject comes up. And that will be that. Finally.

But wait! If we don’t reset our clocks twice a year, how will we ever remember to replace the batteries in our smoke detectors?