
A Brief History of Standard Time and Daylight Saving Time
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     This essay gives an overview of standard time and daylight saving time
(summer time), mainly in the U.S. and Europe.  It includes information from
several sources, including the World Almanac and my collection of European
railroad timetables.  This record is not complete, and I would appreciate
any additional information that you can provide.  

The Situation in 1990

     The TIMZONE2 files that accompany this essay show standard time and
daylight saving time in almost every country in the world.  Standard time
speaks for itself.  There have been a lot of deviations from the original
plan of a time zone centered on every 15-degree interval.  

     All of the U.S. observes daylight saving time from the first Sunday in
April to the last Sunday in October, except for Arizona, most of Indiana,
and Hawaii.  However, the time zone borders have moved to the west, and
some states are close to year-round daylight time, and a few of them (Ohio,
for example) have an extra hour in the summer.  

     The same applies in Europe.  They all have daylight saving time, but
standard time shifts have moved France, Spain, and much of European Russia
into the time zone to the west.  Only Britain, Ireland, and Portugal are in
the "Greenwich" time zone.  Most of the continent has standardized on one
hour ahead of Greenwich time.  All continental European countries observe
summer time from the end of March to the end of September.  Britain and
Ireland stay on summer time until the end of October.  

     Outside North America and Europe, summer time is a spotty phenomenon. 
Japan, which could use it, does not have it.  China has summer time, but it
has only one zone for a very large country, so the relationship between
standard time and sun time varies greatly.  Several countries in the Middle
East and North Africa observe summer time, each on its own schedule.  These
include Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon (nothing else works there; why should
time?), and Libya.  

     Several southern hemisphere countries observe summer time during our
winter.  Some of them are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, the Falk-
land Islands, New Zealand, and Uruguay.  In Australia, there were two sets
of summer time dates for different states this year, and other parts of the
country stay on standard time.  As best I can tell, summer time in Brazil
is not tied to the ordinary calendar, but ends just before the Carnaval
(Mardi Gras) season.  Nighttime is required for Carnaval!  

Standard Time:  United States  

     It seems that the original impetus for standard time came from the
U.S., where dozens of railroad companies spread over 3,000 miles of land-
scape.  The international Meridian Conference was convened in Washington in
1884.  Among other things, the conference ratified the Greenwich observa-
tory in England for the prime meridian.  (Before this, several countries
published maps with the zero-degree line going through their capitals.) 
The United States jumped the gun, and created time zones in 1883.  

     More to the point, the railroads created standard time zones.  The
federal government did not define time zones until 1918, when an act of
Congress directed the Interstate Commerce Commission to do so.  Time zone
boundaries were initially were defined around 15-degree lines, but they
have tended to move west.  For example, the entire state of Ohio was put in
the eastern time zone in 1937, and all of Georgia (rather than just the
eastern part) in 1941.  The eastern portions of Kentucky and Tennessee
switched from Central to Eastern time in 1947, as did far western areas of
Virginia and North Carolina.  Indiana is now in the eastern zone, except
for a few counties around Chicago.  The time zones still creep westward,
but mostly in small increments.  

Standard Time:  Europe  

     In spite of the international conference, Europe did not take to the
idea of standard time as quickly as the U.S. did.  The 1892 timetable for
railroads in Germany shows the situation 8 years after the conference.  
Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Belgium were on GMT.  Southern Germany,
Austria-Hungary, Luxembourg, and Sweden were on Central European Time
(GMT+1).  So were Serbia and Bosnia (now parts of Yugoslavia), as well as
the eastern part of the Turkish Empire, which extended into eastern Europe. 
Romania, Bulgaria, and eastern Turkey were on Eastern European Time
(GMT+2). 

     In 1892, about half of Europe had "standard" time based on sun time in
the capital rather than the time zones set up in the Washington conference. 
These countries were Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Norway, Portugal,
Russia (St. Petersburg was the capital), and Spain.  Northern Germany was
still on sun time, including Berlin.  (Poland and Finland did not exist as
independent countries in 1892.)  Regrettably, the timetable does not say
whether standard time was generally observed in these countries, apart from
the railroads.  

     I do not know just when the time zones came into general use, but they
were well established in 1929.  (I have some reprints of timetables in be-
tween, but the publisher cut costs by eliminating the explanatory sections,
including time comparison tables.)  GMT applied in Great Britain, Ireland,
Belgium, France, Portugal, and Spain.  GMT+1 prevailed in Austria, Czecho-
slovakia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, the Scandinavian
countries, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia.  Bulgaria, Estonia, Greece, Fin-
land, Latvia, Romania, Russia, and Turkey were in GMT+2.  The same time
zones are shown for Europe in 1936/37, and in 1939. 

     The Netherlands was still on sun time in the 1920s and 1930s, but this
was elevated to the status of a time zone as Amsterdam Time (GMT + 20 min-
utes).  Amsterdam Time remained in effect until 1948, when the Netherlands
switched to GMT.  

     Otherwise, prewar time zones remained in effect in the years immedi-
ately after World War II.  France, Spain, and the Netherlands joined most
of the Continent in GMT+1 (Central European Time) in 1950, and Belgium did
the same in 1951.  (At least, this is what The World Almanac indicates. 
Many of the dates here could be off by a year.)  This brought Europe to
standard times that still prevail.  

Daylight Saving Time:  United States

     New York City adopted daylight saving time in the U.S. by local ordi-
nance in 1918.  Daylight saving time spread quickly through the New York
metropolitan area and New York state by local ordinances of dozens of
cities and towns.  Congress had passed a law in 1917 authorizing, but
apparently not directing, the use of daylight time.  Due to opposition from
farmers, Congress repealed the law in 1919.  

     The advance of daylight time before World War II was limited to the
northeastern states and major metropolitan areas, including Chicago (and
most cities in northern Indiana), Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Atlanta. 
Many businesses in Minneapolis observed DST in the 1930s under the auspices
of the local chamber of commerce.  Generally speaking, daylight saving time
occurred from the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October.  

     Congress put the entire U.S. on permanent daylight saving time in
February 1942 for the duration of World War II.  "War Time," as it was
known, ended the last weekend of October 1945.  Nonetheless, interest in
daylight saving time remained high.  All or part of 20 states observed DST
in the late 1940s, and this figure grew to 36 states in 1966.  

     Congress passed the Uniform Time Act of 1966, requiring that daylight
saving time, if observed, begin on the last Sunday of April and end on the
last Sunday of October.  It also required that entire states either observe
DST or remain on standard time in the summer.  This was amended in 1972 to
allow states bisected by a time zone boundary to apply DST on one side of
the boundary (usually the west side) and not the other.  

     An attempt to put the U.S. on year-round DST was abandoned, after DST
from January 6, 1974 to the end of October, and from late February to late
October 1975.  The start of daylight saving time was advanced to the first
Sunday in April, beginning in 1988.  

Summer Time:  Europe

     The idea of advancing the clock in summer had its first proponents in
England, but Germany was the first country to put it into practice.  The
notion of shifting an "unused" hour of early morning daylight to the
evening became more compelling in wartime.  Germany adopted summer time
early in 1916, followed by several other European countries, including
England.   

     After World War I ended, Great Britain, Ireland, France, Spain,
Portugal, and the Netherlands continued to observe summer time.  These were
the European countries on GMT (and the Netherlands, on Amsterdam Time), so
virtually all of Europe was on the same time in the summer half of the
year.  

     World War II also brought special time regimes in Europe.  Germany and
several occupied countries observed year-round summer time.  Britain also
advanced the clock an hour all year, and two hours during the summer half
of the year.    

     Not long after the end of the World War II, the "GMT" countries on the
continent that had been observing summer time advanced their clocks perma-
nently to the GMT+1 time zone (see above).  This marked the end of most
interest in summer time in Western Europe for a while, except for Great
Britain, Ireland, and Portugal.  Germany observed summer time for a while
in the late 1940s, but that may have been the decision of the occupation
powers.  

     Getting from there to here (universal summer time in Europe) took a
lot of steps.  Poland and Norway had summer time by 1960.  In 1963, Poland
was on GMT+2 year-round, but switched back to GMT+1 (no summer time) before
1967.  Norway also gave up the experiment after a short time.  The first
real step came when Italy adopted summer time some time between 1965 and
1967.  France followed suit in 1974 or 1975.  

     Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain went to
summer time in 1977.  Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Turkey adopted summer
time in 1979.  

     This left a "standard time" bloc in Central Europe--East and West
Germany, Austria, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland.  The story was that the
smaller countries would follow West Germany's lead, and West Germany would
not go to summer time unless East Germany did.  Whatever the politics, they
all adopted summer time in 1982 or 1983.  

Time Zone Trivia

     My Casio watch displays a small world map and will show time in 29
zones--the 24 hourly zones, plus half-hour zones for Iran, Afghanistan,
India, Myanmar (formerly Burma), and South Australia.  As TIMZONE2.ZON
shows, there are others.  To begin with, there are 26 hourly zones, in-
cluding 12-hour offsets from GMT on both sides of the International Date
Line and a GMT+13 zone in the easternmost part of Siberia.  Nepal has a
3/4-hour zone, among other unusual zones.  There are a few places where sun
time is still observed locally.  I have heard that Saudi Arabia is one of
them.  

     China has the biggest time zone of all.  The entire country is on
GMT+8, at least officially.  From east to west, this time zone spans more
than 60 degrees.  The sun set today (April 8) in eastern Manchuria at 5:40
p.m., and at 9:35 p.m. in the westernmost part of China, over 3,000 miles
away.  

     The Central European time zone (GMT+1) is more than 32 degrees between
its extremities.  Today's sunset was 7:00 p.m. (summer time) in southeast-
ern Yugoslavia, and 9:10 p.m. at Cape Finisterre in Spain.  The border
between Poland/Czechoslovakia/Hungary and the USSR is probably the longest
continuous line with a time differential of 2 hours.  

     In a sense, the world's biggest "time zone" is the one used for rail
and air transport in the USSR.  Timetables for the entire country, which
covers 11 time zones, are compiled in Moscow Time (GMT+2, or GMT+3 from the
end of March to the end of September).  Fortunately, the timetables give
passengers clues to local time.  

Comments and Suggestions

     I would appreciate any additions or corrections that you can provide. 
You can reach me on the Geoclock Bulletin Board in Arlington, Virginia,
(703) 241-7980.   


Roger Wollstadt
1437 N. Longfellow Street
Arlington, Virginia  22205

April 8, 1990

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