- On January 7, 1974, at 8:27 a.m., the sun rose. When they arrived at school that morning the children in the Washington region had been forced to leave their homes in the dark because of the country’s new year-round daylight-saving time experiment, which began on January 6. Florence Bauer of Springfield told the Washington Post that as her daughter was due to depart for school, “it was jet black” outside. “Some of the kids brought their own torches.”
- The Department of Transportation’s Steve Grossman projected that the adjustment will benefit the American people in the long term. Longer daylight hours might eliminate the dangers of nighttime journeys, such as “stress, anxiety, and many drivers have had a couple of drinks,” as he told the Washington Post. Other protesters promised opposition outside of the capital: It was time to “put our foot down and end this monkey behavior,” according to St. Francis, Kansas Mayor Robert Yost.
- In light of the recent political momentum towards a return to year-round daylight saving time, it’s perhaps time to revisit another time when the United States experimented with the passage of time.
- Daylight saving time was approved by Congress on December 14, 1973, and will be in effect for two years. The measure was passed into law the next day by President Nixon. During World War II, the United States instituted permanent daylight saving time. The measure was also put in place to conserve gasoline. Paul Mullinax, a Pentagon geographer, came up with the notion of placing the whole continental United States on a single time zone, which was a lot less crazy than permanent DST. From Bangor to Barstow, “USA Time” would apply, eliminating jet lag and standardising TV programmes. Patsy Mink, a member of the House of Representatives from Hawaii, introduced a bill to Congress based on his notion. A remarkably adaptable animal, the human person, he said. To be a slave of the sun is unnecessary, “There is no need for it.”
- Despite this, the early-morning gloom gradually became deadly for children: On January 7, a vehicle hit a 6-year-old Alexandria girl as she walked to Polk Elementary School; the collision shattered her leg. In February, two kids from Prince George’s County were injured. Eight Florida children were killed in road accidents in the weeks after the shift. Reubin Askew, the governor of Florida, requested that the legislation be repealed by Congress. During a speech to Congress on January 28, 1974, Iowa Senator Dick Clark observed, “It’s time to accept that we may have made a mistake.” The sun was lagging behind the clock when schools in the Washington, D.C., region postponed their opening schedules.
- The reality, on the other hand, was a little more nuanced. In February, the National Safety Council stated that the number of pre-dawn deaths had increased from 18 to 20. In a letter to the Washington Post in July, Roger Sant, then the Federal Energy Administration’s associate administrator-designate, stated that the switch to Daylight Saving Time saved between 20,000 and 30,000 tonnes of coal per day at a savings of 1 percent. According to him, accidents had a tendency to occur in the late afternoon.
Despite the Watergate scandal’s impact on Nixon’s presidency, America was ready to move on from its clock experiments by August of that year. According to the New York Times, 79 percent of Americans agreed of the adjustment in December 1973, but only 42 percent approved three months later. After President Nixon’s resignation, US Senator Bob Dole of Kansas introduced an amendment in August that would end the experiment with Daylight Saving Time (DST). It was over in a jiffy. The House of Representatives approved a similar measure. Standard time will be reinstated on October 27th, after a law was ratified by the whole Congress in late September. President Gerald Ford signed it into law on October 5, 1974. A House subcommittee stated that energy benefits “must be weighed against a majority of the public’s disdain for Daylight Saving Time observance.”
