For those who live in time zones that switch this weekend to daylight saving time, aka summer time, my sympathies if you have a lot of timepieces to change. Around my home, I had to change a total of 12 clocks:

• Master bedroom clock-radio
• Guest bedroom alarm clock
• Thermostat clock
• Wall clock in living room
• Wall clock in kitchen
• Coffee maker clock
• Microwave clock
• Kitchen range clock
• Wall clock in my office
• Wall clock in my wife's office
• Clock in my automobile
• Clock in my wife's automobile

It sounds like a lot of my time was consumed last night changing the time, but it could have been much worse...

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

Thankfully, nearly all of my functioning timepieces are sufficiently computerised to be autonomously aware of DST. The major exception is, ironically, my cycle-computer.

You know....

I first saw that image a few years back. Looks like it's been "touched up", or down, whichever way you look at it.

And I know, I know... you can all bleat "pedant" at me. Whatever, but that's Avebury, not Stonehenge. Couple of hours drive from me. There are 100's if not 1000's of stone circles and other antiquities scattered over the UK. The big ones get the most publicity, naturally.

Original article:

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/news/moving-the-avebury-stones-for-british-summer-time

As for home clocks... My 20 year old central heating clock will need adjusting. As will the meter diameter one in the dining room, the small one in the livingroom. The one that's mostly hidden in the kitchen will be at the time time again... All the others will "just work"...

Although maybe not the one in my BBC Master. Might have to fix that one up.

-Gordon

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Gordon Henderson.
See my Ruby 6502 and 65816 SBC projects here: https://projects.drogon.net/ruby/

It's still funny.

I think we have 3 clocks left, well 4 including my Jeep.

In California, this may be our last year of time change.

I'm so looking forward to when EU (and associated countries like my own) will move to permanent DST (or rather, no DST, but change the timezones so that they are +1 relative to their previous relation to UTC). I had hopes for this year (from October), but maybe it'll happen next year.
Next: Get Japan to move their timezone (they don't use DST) at least one hour east . At least one hour. As it is, it gets sunny way before it's time to get up (except for those with a very long commute), and dark at around 15, from around November. Pitch dark, which makes it worse (compared to more northern latitudes).

I am somewhat in favor of eliminating the time change as well, but also see some problems with a permanent shift forward, especially during the dead of winter.

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

I'm not in favour of a permanent (nor a temporary) offset of the clocks from solar time (rounded to the nearest hour offset from UTC/UT1). If such a shift *seems* necessary, it's better to handle it by shifting business and school hours, not the whole clock.

Why permanent DST ? For most of Europe that means they will be an hour or more ahead of solar time, and Spain would be 2 hours ahead.

The funny thing, to me, which isn't amazing -- many things strike me as funny, is that by going to "permanent" DST, that suggests "we got time wrong all along!".

California is toying with going to permanent DST, which, in theory, would put us in PDT: Pacific Daylight Time.

With the current laws regarding DST, States are able to OPT OUT of DST (for example, Arizona does), but that means they have to remain in STANDARD time. There's no mechanism to select permanent DAYLIGHT time, since the state is opting out of Daylight time all together! So, Arizona is, I think, on constant Mountain Standard Time (Continental US has 4 time zones: Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific).

However, apparently, while the states can't choose to be in Daylight time, they CAN choose what timezone to be in!! So, in theory our State legislature can direct Ye Who Keeps Time to move California out of PST (UTC - , and in to UTC - 9.

Now, this isn't as extraordinary as it sounds (well, yea it is, but...), the bulk of Western Canada is in the Pacific Time zone, even though, geographically, a bunch of is, indeed, in the UTC - 9 zone of the earth. The land from the Western Edge of where US/Canada meet to where the main eastern borders of the state of Alaska starts, covers two times zones -- but are all classified as being in the Pacific Time Zone. So, when you cross the border in to Alaska, you have to move your clocks by two hours, not one.

They'd probably name it California Standard Time. Who knows.

Good times (hah!).

The reason for 'permanent' DST is that around here, for example, during the darker time of the year it's bright from early morning, before I get up, but it's always dark from late afternoon. The morning light is just a waste. It's tiring to never have any daylight left when work is finished (or even when finishing work early). At my latitude (in Norway), at deepest winter it's also dark in the morning when I go to work, but I don't actually mind that - I get up, get into the car, go to work. What I want is light when I'm not at work. With 'DST' I actually get a bit of that.

As for Chromatix' suggestion, "it's better to handle it by shifting business and school hours, not the whole clock.", yes, that's true, but I don't see that happening. It just won't. Too much to change, from every single shop door to all kind of documentation everywhere. It won't happen.
EU apparently did a poll about this - some 80% were in favour of 'permanent' DST IIRC.

Not wrong, just out of date.. I briefly mentioned the timezone of Japan. The way it's set it's perfect for getting out on the rice field at early morning, and get a lot done before it gets really hot, or too hot to work (in the summer at least). Same for the old style farming in Norway - get up at 4.30, start working.
But in modern society working- and business hours shifted, but the timezones didn't.

Funny, I thought farmers didn't pay much attention to the clock per se, only the position of the sun in the sky - the same as their crops and livestock do. Of course, they have always paid very close attention to the calendar, which is a completely separate topic, and to the weather.

So farmers don't care what timezone they're in; if anything, they look up in an almanac what time the sun rises, and set their alarms accordingly. It's only industrial-era (and post-industrial) business that sets a rigid schedule on what the clock says; a legacy of times when factories worked three shifts of 8 hours each, no more, no less. Offices and schools adopted a compatible schedule to the factories, largely settling on the familiar "9 to 5".

Let's not forget why DST was introduced in the first place: as a wartime safety measure, because cars had to have their headlights severely dimmed and streetlights were all switched off, so that enemy bombers would have more difficulty in finding their targets. (For similar reasons, road signs and railway station nameboards were removed, at least in Britain.) The time shift reduced traffic accidents under those conditions, without seriously disrupting the essential industries.

But we are no longer in mandatory blackout conditions, and working hours have in fact become more flexible over time. DST is thus obsolete as a concept. Not only that, but it would theoretically be more relevant in the depths of winter when daylight is more scarce, rather than in summer when the days are already long - so the recent application of DST only to the summer months is doubly illogical.

The question of aligning the western states and provinces more closely with solar time is a valid one, mind - but I don't think "California Standard Time" would be correct, not least because the natural acronym for that is already in use. "Western Standard Time" might work, though.

I don't agree with that. Where I live, in the depths of winter, sunrise is at 8:50, and I would hate for that to be changed to 9:50.

On the other hand, when DST starts, sunrise is already at 6:15, and moving it to 7:15 has little impact (actually nice to be sleeping in the dark for a little longer) . Moving sunset from 19:10 (7:10pm) to 20:10 (8:10pm) is more useful.

Not exactly.

DST was first enacted in the USA in 1918, well before any bombers were a threat to cities. In fact, Benjamin Franklin proposed in 1784 that getting up earlier during summer would save on candles. Germany began observing DST in 1916 in an effort to conserve fuel (it didn't help). The USA didn't have a nationwide DST policy until 1966.

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

I believe studies have shown since then that DST actually increases power consumption.

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