Clocks Change Tomorrow [1918] [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Clocks Change Tomorrow [1918] [pdf]

nytimes.com

75 pointshgennaro32 comments

There's a long history of railroad involvement in time changes, e.g., the "Day of two Noons". Adjustments for railroads are why we have time zones, and why Date.toLocaleString has weird minute and second offsets for pre-1800 dates:

http://curtisautery.appspot.com/5779342353235968

The alternative would be for everyone to use something like UTC, which means that while their relationship to the sun changes depending on location, the actual value is the same everywhere. I find this especially useful when scheduling online meetings with participants from many countries.

Yes, that's a cool way to do it and somewhat natural if you're a server person; but perhaps mentally challenging for a lot of people.

Remember Swatch Internet Time[1]?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time

I wish this would catch on again. Swatch Internet Time was a pre-Twitter invention, and the live global connection to one another was weaker than it is now. I'd love to see it supported as a timestamp in forum software, Twitter clients, etc.

Right, but if you only use UTC then you can't tell when it's appropriate to call people or schedule meeting in various parts of the world. ("OK, this person is in Hong Kong and I want to schedule the meeting at 11:00 UTC. What time does the sun rise in Hong Kong?")

It seems like this is no different than the current situation. Today, you look up what time it is in Hong Kong. In UTC world, you look up what hours are business hours in Hong Kong.

It is really. 'Business hours' isn't scientifically defined. If I say to Google, 'time in Melbourne', I'll see it's 3.11AM. And if I need to know what time it is in three of my offices, I can save those cities in my clock and swipe between them at any time.

UTC would make some things easier and some things harder. I think it would make reliably scheduling meetings easier.

Suppose you want to schedule a phone call for two weeks from now with your colleague in Melbourne. That's currently kind of challenging. It's fairly easy to accidentally agree to an inconsistent time. What if that two weeks straddles a DST change in one country, but not the other?

In UTC world, you agree to a single time, and there's no confusion. To pick an appropriate time, just look up the range of business hours in Melbohrne, and intersect those hours with the business hours wherever you are.

I don't really see how your google or clock app examples are compelling. Just google "business hours in Melbourne", and then save those in an app or wherever if you think you'll want that information again soon.

    > I can save those cities in my clock and swipe between them at any time.

If everyone used UTC, you could have just one clock, and turn it into a (possibly overlapping) pie chart - a different colour for each of your office's (approximate) business hours.

Yeah. China has one time-zone, but is wide enough for five, and they already treat time like this.

The last week has been stupid, with UK and Europe already switching back to standard time with the US lagging on DST.

UTC Now! (Sent at 16:16 UTC)

That's exactly my point. userbinator suggested that scheduling things would be easier if everyone used UTC. I'm saying this wouldn't actually improve anything, because you'd still have to check a local quantity (business hours, local time, or whatever) for each person.

Don't forget that UTC has leap seconds, too. This may not cause problems for trains, but it does for servers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8839458

TAI is like UTC but without leap seconds.

That's a bit like my time system I've been pushing.

http://kybernetikos.com/2012/11/26/modern-times-a-new-clock/

or just the clock

http://kybernetikos.github.io/UIT/

You need to share your location so that it knows how to rotate the numbers on the face and how to draw the sunrise/sunset times on the dial.

The Director General McAdoo mentioned in the OP was the head of a US governmental agency that had taken control and ownership of the US railroad network. According to the Wikipedia article [1] "it was possibly the largest American experiment with nationalization," and it was reversed after WW I.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Railroad_Adminis...

Passenger rail was never reversed.

Uh, Amtrak wasn't founded until 1970. It was reversed, and then reversed again.

So basically time stood still for an hour instead of, as nowadays, repeating the third hour of the day. I wonder if this was really the case or if it was just an "easier" way to explain it to the average Joe.

An old pendulum clock can be easily set forward, but you must not push the arms counter clockwise. The method I've used requires waiting for the ding-dongs at each hour and half hour when you turn it forwards, so just stopping the clock for 1 hour is certainly easier than setting it forward 23 hours.

Benjamin Franklin's Essay on Daylight Saving Time:

Every morning, as soon as the sun rises, let all the bells in every church be set ringing; and if that is not sufficient?, let cannon be fired in every street, to wake the sluggards effectually, and make them open their eyes to see their true interest.

http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/franklin3.html

Just to be clear, that essay is not about daylight savings time. It's a humorous essay about people sleeping late.

I know it wasn't. That's called "editorial license" and you see it every single day on HN when users creatively edit headlines.

What blows my mind is the collective amount of "news" articles we get twice a year, every year for DST

The American public (and world public for that matter) is obviously 100% apathetic.

If you really want this to change then you have to goad politicians and tell them how the USA is stuck in the 20th century and going backwards. But good luck with them caring about that either.

What is going to change and why should we want that?

I prefer that we keep "DST" all year long. Its more pleasant leaving work while its still daylight. And I suspect that many US citizens think the same.

You propose moving timezones east by one hour?

I certainly think New England should move a time-zone to the east in the winter. The least disruptive way to do that would be to get on DST one year and never get off.

This solar time vs. standard time map [1] indicates that most of the world prefers to slightly bias their daylight hours to the afternoon, and I'd be happier if we joined them.

[1] http://blog.poormansmath.net/how-much-is-time-wrong-around-t...

Just get up earlier, if you like that. Moving the timezone probably wouldn't have any longer term effects.

In Spain, there are in `the wrong' timezone, ie they are on German/Polish time. As a result, life still happens at reasonable solar times, but at late wallclock times.

Okay, but some schedules are inflexible in practice, and "just change the time you do things" is also an argument against DST.

Oh, it definitely is. Though, DST has a bit more of a bite, since people won't just adapt to it by moving things over one by one. (Because it goes back to sane for half a year every year.)

How about we keep standard time all year long, and you just leave work an hour earlier?

If you can write a law that will enforce that my boss lets me do that, sure.

(The real issue is that the legally-regulated opening hours for e.g. banks are too late in the day)

Please, just split the difference and be done with it.

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