I must have 25 clocks in my life. With Daylight Savings Time just past, I've had to reset most of them (the computers take care of themselves).
So... Why don't clocks have a DST button on them? When spring comes, push the button or flip the switch or whatever and the clock adds an hour. Reverse in the fall.
I realize that not every country/locale recognizes DST, but honestly, how much could such a function add to the cost of a generic clock? And if you don't need it, don't use it.-- phoenix, Nov 01 2001 Baked http://www.restorat.../item.html?item=911Someone posted this before. It both keeps itself correct and adjusts for DST (per the label on the box; the latter feature is not mentioned on the web site). [DrBob, Nov 01 2001, last modified Oct 05 2004] Ah, [Rods Tiger]. Nice to see I'm not the only one up at 3:00 am (EST, that is).-- phoenix, Nov 01 2001 It might be a bit weird having dawn at 5:00 pm, but what the hell, I'm with you, Rods.
Alternatively, if we must persist in this antiquated system of time-keeping, with clocks going back and forth an hour in winter or summer, why can't they go forward at 9:00 am on a Friday, and back at 6:00 am on a Monday?-- Guy Fox, Nov 01 2001 [Guy Fox] Don't you see that if we have one global time zone, everyone else will have to change to be n-sync with *us*.
With regards to abolishing DST, I'd rather have more light in the afternoon than in the morning. I find it quite exciting to get up when it's dark. Which is tragic.-- stupop, Nov 01 2001 There are plenty of clocks available that use the radio time signals from the atomic clocks around the world to adjust themselves automatically.
I can't be bothered to look up a link but they are out there in force. They much more expensive than normal clocks, but they are also accurate to the nearest 4/10 of a second...-- CasaLoco, Nov 01 2001 //everyone else will have to change to be n-sync with *us*.//
A 6 billion person boy-band? For the love of God, no!-- Guy Fox, Nov 01 2001 Rumour has it that the Victorians considered adopting GMT throughout the entire empire. They rejected it too, but I don't know why.
I'd go for a universal earth-time but for the change of days mid-day so to speak. This morning it was Thursday but now it's Friday. Awfully confusing. If anyone can sort this one out (and find a way of glueing all the door-knobs back on) then I'm in.-- st3f, Nov 01 2001 The clock on my mobile phone (a Panasonic GD93, iirc) has a daylight saving time option you set in March and unset in October.
Anyway, I think a better solution would be to adopt what I was told at school the Romans did, where you divide the period of daylight into 12 hours, and night into another 12 hours. This means if you work 9 till 5 you'll always be arriving and leaving work in daylight. It also means you'll work less in winter, when everyone's more sluggish and tired and the roads are full of ice and I'm getting depressed just thinking about it...-- pottedstu, Nov 01 2001 I like Pottedstu's return to Roman ways. Or at least I did until I realised that on Midsummer Day, We'd all be working for what is now about a 14 hour shift. Sod that! Imagine how complicated clocks would have to be. Have the whole world use GMT including DST!!!-- sven3012, Nov 01 2001 I don't feel up to reading all this stuff. I just hope that someone has pointed out that this is Baked (see link).-- DrBob, Nov 01 2001, last modified Nov 02 2001 Time zones make sense.
But the spring-forward / fall-back thing has got to go.
Why not just shift 1/2 hour next time and leave it there.
UnaBubba - yeah, that would be nice. Wouldn't have to dumb-down everything.-- quarterbaker, Nov 01 2001 If I remember right there's an Ibsen play (Ghosts, I think) that ends with the main character sitting in a chair, rocking back and forth in an "I'm completely bonkers now" kind of way, muttering to himself, "The sun... the sun... the sun... " as the long, dark night closes around him in an all-too metaphorical way. I know how he feels.-- Guy Fox, Nov 01 2001 We have an antique clock, one of my wife's family heirlooms, that hasn't been wound in maybe twenty years. It is the perfect statement against daylight savings time, computerized schedulers, and all the fuss of progress and modern life.-- DrBob, Nov 02 2001 Who said anything about batteries?-- DrBob, Nov 02 2001 No, no, no [UnaBubba]. It's a *solar* powered antique clock.-- phoenix, Nov 02 2001 It's a regular, wind-up clockwork clock. (Otherwise the notation would have read that we had taken the batteries out, pulled the plug, or covered the solar panel.)-- DrBob, Nov 02 2001 [waugs: link fixed; if it breaks again, search for "atomic clock".]-- DrBob, Nov 02 2001 <pedant>It's "Daylight Saving_ Time" (no "s").</pedant> Grrrr...-- MrWrong, Nov 02 2001 [Peter Sealy] Generally speaking, I know where my clocks are. And no, it's not exactly strenuous to change the time on any of them. But for all that, why not have a button that does it for you?
My point is that it would probably be cheap - to the point of not adding anything to the cost of the unit (contrast with a radio based system) and it would generally make life more pleasant. Like Wind-Up Batteries.-- phoenix, Nov 02 2001 My company hasd issued me a Nextel phone that sets its time display automatically when DST hits and also when travelling to different time zones. Rather disconcerting, actually.-- daruma, Nov 02 2001 With all these hours of daylight we are suposedly saving, I have one question - where are they going to? Ok, ok, old jokes. I have a digital watch which is a $10 Walmart special - it has a DST mode you just turn on and off when you need to - neat! I have family scattered around the globe and to keep people from calling each other at 3am, I have distributed a JavaScript clock which works out the time and DST on/off status for the relevant countries (all the dates differ). So its baked, and if not, it is bakeable by a an hour's simple coding.-- jetckalz, Nov 02 2001 PS, with most of the digital alarm clocks I've had you can only set the time on them by going all the way round the twenty-three hours. I also have a watch like waugs's. It used to go back but the mechanism bust. The real bastard of it is that there's a day-of-the-month on it also which is now rarely on the right day.-- Guy Fox, Nov 03 2001 The Time Museum in Rockford had a clock (Chinese?) which could be set to run at different rates in the daytime and nighttime to provide that the time between sunrise and sunset was always 6:00am to 6:00pm. Mechanically it seemed more complicated than would be necessary (an arrangement using an eliptical cam and worm gear should be simpler) but the concept was interesting.-- supercat, Dec 28 2001 I'd love to have one of those Chinese clocks...Would have to be a pretty big cam, the day length changes every day <a tiny bit, but still...> Extremely complicated clockwork is wonderful.-- StarChaser, Dec 29 2001 Screw earth-time. Stardates for all. Then, you have to readjust only if you're travelling near the speed of light. ;-)-- RayfordSteele, Feb 07 2002 random, halfbakery