Afterwork: Bordered, sharpened, resized.


The Standard Time Act of 1918 standardized the time zones first implemented by the railroads nearly 30 years before and mandated adoption of daylight time for the entire country. That mandate was repealed, under pressure from the states, in 1919. -- US Naval Observatory.

"The Department of the Navy serves as the country's official timekeeper, with the Master Clock facility at the Washington Naval Observatory"--National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1992 and 1993

The U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO) is established as the Department of Defense reference for time by DoD Directive 5160.51 of 14 Jun 85 and SECNAV Instruction 4120.20 of 04 Feb 86.

There have been several instances where Daylight time was uniformly applied across the country. From 1942-1945, daylight time was adopted across the nation to conserve wartime electricity. A similar measure was taken in 1973-1975 following the oil embargo of 1973. On January 6, 1974, implementing the Daylight Saving Time Energy Act, clocks were set ahead for a fifteen-month period through April 27, 1975. This experiment worked, but Congress did not continue the experiment in 1975 because of opposition -- mostly from the farming states.

From the US Naval Observatory:

* At one time US railroads had nearly 300 time zones across the US. These were the times in local communities, on the clocks on churches or county buildings.
* Benjamin Franklin's An Economical Project, written in 1784 while a delegate to Paris, is the earliest known DST proposal.
* London builder William Willett could have been at home in Indiana. His proposal in 1907 was that clocks be moved ahead 20 minutes each Sunday in April and moved back 20 minutes each Sunday in October.
* In Russia, DST is a 2 hour adjustment.
* The 1966 act set the beginning date for the "last week in April" and the ending date as the "last Sunday in October." In 1986, President Reagan established the start as "the first Sunday in April."


BTW: My part of Indiana has always operated on "Indiana Time" That is to say we didn't change our clocks for Daylight Savings Time. Which is not true all through the state, only is small pockets. A few counties up north by Chicago, a few down south by Kentucky, and us in the center. As of this spring that all changed. Those of us not on daylight savings time are now instead of exisisting in this weird twilight zone.

If you look at the photograph's time stamp you'll see the image was taken around seven o'clock. Something I've had to start getting use too, because this time last year it would have been sunset.



`lns