Pennsylvania Angler & Boater - March/April 2015 - 2

photo-Fred Wright

Straight

TALK
by John A. Arway

Executive Director
Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission

Spring Ahead
Most of us have grown up with the biannual ritual of
changing our clocks in the spring and fall to accommodate
for Daylight Savings Time (DST). We typically move our
clocks forward one hour in the spring, spring ahead, and
backward one hour in the fall, fall back. This practice was
created to allow us to take advantage of an extra hour of
daylight during the spring and summer months.
Our ancestors never had to worry about clocks since their
day started when the sun rose in the east and finished when
it set in the west. They also ate meals when they were hungry
and went to sleep when they were tired. Many of us long for
those simpler times. Unfortunately, we now live in a time
where, by necessity, we eat, sleep, work and play by schedules
that are controlled by the clock. Although our ancestor's
method of timekeeping was ok for keeping track of local
time, we have evolved as a society and now require a time
structure for all of our daily activities. This happened when
we changed from an agrarian society to an industrialized
society. Now that we are a computerized society, it is even
more important to most of us.
Society first began timekeeping on standard time
because of the need to synchronize clocks around the
world. In fact, Samuel Langley at the Western University
of Pennsylvania's Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh has
been recognized as being the originator of the modern
standard time system in 1869, 3 years after the creation of
the Pennsylvania Fish Commission.1 Time is responsible
for separating the globe into eastern and western hemispheres and one prime meridian (0° longitude) and an
international date line (180° longitude).
We should thank or criticize New Zealand entomologist
George Vernon Hudson who is credited with the modern
DST concept. He first proposed a 2-hour daylight saving
shift in a paper he presented to the Wellington Philosophical
Society in 1895. He proposed the idea, so he could have more
time collecting insects when he finished his day shift job.2
Leave it to a biologist to come up with a world changing idea,
so he could spend more time studying insects.

Pennsylvania Angler & Boater * March/April 2015

Although Benjamin Franklin's proverb "Early to bed
and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise"
preceded the creation of DST, many suggest that it was a
recognition of one of the very reasons why DST was created.
In Franklin's time, it was to save candles. In our case, it is to
save energy. Winston Churchill once said that it enlarges "the
opportunities for the pursuit of health and happiness among
the millions of people who live in this country."3 Churchill's
quote was a recognition of William Willett, a prominent
English builder and outdoorsman, who independent of
Hudson, proposed the concept of DST, because he noticed
how many Londoners were sleeping through a large part of
the day. He personally wanted more time at the end of the
day to finish his round of golf.
DST has been controversial since it was first created.
Clearly, there are both perceived and actual advantages and
disadvantages to DST. Some of the benefits include saving
energy by using less electricity for lighting, promoting
outdoor activities, which is good for our physical and mental
health, reducing traffic accidents and crime and being good
for business. It is also said to bring a smile to everyone's
face, because it provides more light and sunshine. Others
argue that it really doesn't save energy, especially in today's
society, increases the incidence of heart attacks, changes
our morning behavior, which can be bad for our health by
disturbing our rest-activity cycle, increases fuel consumption
and atmospheric deposition and creates problems due to
uncertainty about when to change our clocks and computers.
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Pennsylvania Angler & Boater - March/April 2015

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