Since I get up early and like having a longer period of pre-dawn darkness, which daylight savings time provides, I'd prefer that setting to be the permanent one. But on the other hand, since I also like going to sleep early, I hate it when daylight glares in the windows until after nine. I've read that our Corporate Overlords prefer DST to Standard Time because more daylight in the early evening encourages people to go out and buy stuff after work. That makes more sense than the older excuse, which was that DST somehow 'saves energy' by delaying the point at which light switches are flicked on at end of day.
The original reason given by the politicians was so the farmers would have more evening time to put up crops. Since most farms do fieldwork from dawn to dusk this was total nonsense. Some of the farmer's groups exposed who was behind this ludicrous nonsense and it was the oil companies and recreational equipment manufacturers. Boat and motorcycle sales went up and more gas was being burned by moving that morning daylight hour to the evening. Then when extreme environmental politics took hold, we were told that the extra hour saved energy because of not needing lights for that hour. Many people bought that total BS and were blinded to the increased use of petroleum products and all their polluting emissions. Daylight time equals more fossil fuels burned for recreational purposes. If this was done for the working people, then that extra hour of evening daylight would be more useful during the winter months. Dusk and impending dark at 4 PM really slow things down. Ask your Fed Ex driver, UPS driver, construction worker, etc. It should be done in reverse if done at all. When time zones and standard time was set up, it was done scientifically. Daylight time was strictly political. All this switcheroo of an hour is a nonissue for people like @Don Alaska.
Exactly! Back in the day, if the hay was about to get rained on out in the field, the farmers would all be scrambling to bring it in, daylight or dark, regardless of what time the clock said.
Changing the clocks hasn't ever bothered me. Wow, something in life that doesn't bother me! LOL Done our six clocks when I got up this morning. The hard thing is, synching (matching) all of the times to be the same time, but I do it. It does take patience however.
When I lived in Missouri, our pastor also had milk cows. Twice a year, he changed the time that he milked those poor cows. In the fall they stood out there in the pasture and moo’ed at him for an hour while they waited to be milked, morning and night. In the spring, they got called in an hour early. About the time that they were used to the new milking times, it was probably about ready for the time change again. I didn’t see why on earth he didn’t just keep milking them at the same times, but then I realized that whoever picked up the milk might be on a schedule. I think that the pastor also had a job in town, so he would have had to be at work at a certain time each day, and that meant that the cows would have to be milked on that schedule as well.
I always get up right before sunrise, and for some strange reason the sun came up an hour earlier this morning. There must have been some cosmic event that happened through the night but I slept right through it.
On the dairy farm where I spent the summer of 1970, the cows grazed and slept in the meadows all through the summer, and presented themselves at the milking barn door at the same times every day. They apparently had a hierarchy, with the alpha cows at the head of the line and acting rowdy, particularly in the morning. If they didn't get let in when they thought they should, they'd holler and kick the door, and then behave badly while being milked. At least that's how I remember it, fifty years later!
Unfortunately, we go on DST as well. The same bozo governor who changed our time zones from 4 to 2 also put Alaska on Daylight savings so we would stay in sync with Seattle. where much of our shipping comes from. Reducing the time zones was a good thing, but the DSTY move was a bad thing. I want them to come up with a way to actually "save" an hour of daylight in June and put it into December.
A couple of years ago I bought a used clock radio at Goodwill for $5. It has this feature that is supposed to automatically adjust the time when DST rolls around. I don't know how it could do this, since it has no calendar. There is a "YES/NO" switch on the side you set depending on whether or not your region observes DST. The instructions I downloaded from the net after buying it said to make that setting before plugging the clock in for the first time. It also says that when you first plug in the clock, the correct time automatically displays (you don't have to initially set it), but I have no idea how that could be possible ("This clock has a built-in automatic time set system.") They originally shipped with the some batteries installed somewhere...the power outage batteries were user-installed. And I still wonder how the thing could tell when to adjust the time back & forth without a calendar. Because I bought this used just sitting on a Goodwill shelf with no batteries in it, I figured that the DST features were long dead, because the time never self-adjusts (even on the wrong days of the year.) But what that switch DOES do is set the time back an hour--then forward again--when you move that switch. So when DST rolls in and out, I just slide the switch. Still, it's supposed to do it on its own...
I think some of them cue on the cell towers and some use the atomic clock radio signal to adjust the time. I have a couple of them and I don't know why all car radio clocks are not now of that variety. One of my "auto" clocks is always an hour behind, as you have to set the time zone and it has no accommodation for Alaska Time, so it is always on Pacific Time. It is in the bedroom, so I just know it is an hour off.
I just took another look at the clock for that second battery compartment...there's only one. I believe the manual's talking about the same one in two different contexts. There's a switch to set the time zone (sorry, no Alaska or Hawaii.) They probably set the time at the factory for that time zone, put the Power Outage batteries in, then ship it. I likely misunderstand the DST function, and the switch is operating as designed...a quick way to go back & forth. The instructions are awkwardly written as though you just set DST once for your observant/nonobservant location and not back & forth every six months if need be. I'm glad I'm blathering about this here...I'll stop wondering if I'm missing out on functionality. Regarding clocks in cars...mine have run the gamut. I've had 3 vehicles with satellite radio (1989/2005/2019) and only the 2019 automatically sets the clock. It's also the only one with a NAV system. You can manually change the time in the 2019 (I gotta think it will correct itself), and enable a "GPS Synch" feature that sets the local time wherever you are.
You must be a sound sleeper not to have heard that asteroid as it whizzed past earth causing it not to rotate for an hour. Scared the pee out of me and that is why I got up so early.