Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/562

 Hooverizing Daylight

Not advocating a bedless day, but suggesting the readjustment of hours

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���THE project of advancing the clock in summer in order to persuade slothful humanity to keep early hours at that season, after nearly a dec- ade of unsuccess in getting itself taken seriously, has suddenly come to fruition under the stress of war conditions, and is an accomplished fact over the greater part of the civilized world.

A certain modest representative of the building trade, now deceased, must have chuckled in his grave when Represent- ative Borland referred to him the other day, in Congress, as "the late William Willett, the noted scientist of England." Willett put forth his daylight-saving scheme, in a form somewhat different from that eventually adopted by the British Government, in the year 1907. The first daylight-saving bill was in- troduced in the House of Commons in the year 1908. Presently similar projects began to crop up all over the world. Most scientific men ridiculed them, but many of these authorities have now been con- verted. Then came the war, and daylight saving was one of its many startling products.

It would be quite impossible within the limits of a brief article to set down all the pros and cons of this scheme. The pros are generally familiar, because they have been embodied in numerous circulars, widely disseminated by chambers of com- merce, and faithfully reflected in our com-

��These timepieces from Grandfather to Baby Ben, will all have to be reset if we adopt the daylight saving measure. In this article the whole subject is discussed. Daylight saving has been advocated ever since the days of Benjamin Franklin, when that wor- thy scored the citizens of Paris for their slothfulness

��mercial-minded press. The cons are less well understood; but more will be heard of them when America is undergoing her first summer of dislocated time. A year or two of experience will be worth centuries of academic discussion in en- abling us to decide whether we wish to save daylight indefinitely.

Western Europe has now had two years* experience with the plan, and the results are those that might have been expected under existing conditions. They depend to some extent upon latitude. In far northern countries there was really no good reason for adopting the scheme, except to bring their time-schedules into agreement with those of their southern neighbors. In high latitudes it is im- possible in summer to limit sleeping time to the hours of darkness, because daylight prevails through the greater part of the night, or all of it, according to date. Hence the Norwegian Govern- ment reports the plan a failure, and sim- ilar but unoflftcial reports have come from Scotland.

Elsewhere the plan has undoubtedly saved fuel, and it seems to have con- duced to the health and comfort of a considerable part of the population. In the United Kingdom it is claimed that in the four and a half months that "summer time" was effective in 191G, the saving in gas alone represented 2G0,000 tons of coal, and reduced the expenses of con-

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