Daylight Synchronous Time - a proposal

[Oniya]

With the US entering Daylight-Whatever-Time this past weekend, I got to thinking.  Historically, DST was implemented to save on the amount of candles used by people who followed 'clock time' instead of 'solar time'.  Farmers, for example, got up when the cows needed milking, regardless of what that consarned conglomeration of gears said.  Clerks, on the other hand, were supposed to be in the office in time to 'do business', regardless of where the sun was.  By shifting the clocks forward and back, the clock-time was realigned with the solar time twice a year.  It was somewhat convenient to do it that way, because the physical clocks only had to be messed with twice a year.

Nowadays, many clocks are set up to automagically reset to the appropriate time - I played Minecraft for an extra 7 minutes on Saturday night/Sunday morning, and ended up going to bed at three instead of two.  It's a simple programming matter, as I understand it, even if you put aside the various atomic clock synchronizing apps.

So, why not distribute the hour of 'shift' across the year?  Instead of the sun rising later and later in the fall, and then suddenly *bam!* we change the clocks and the morning is bright again, change the clocks a few seconds a day so that the adjustment is almost imperceptible.  I think we're reaching the point in technology where this could be possible.

[dragonsen]

With the US entering Daylight-Whatever-Time this past weekend, I got to thinking.  Historically, DST was implemented to save on the amount of candles used by people who followed 'clock time' instead of 'solar time'.  Farmers, for example, got up when the cows needed milking, regardless of what that consarned conglomeration of gears said.  Clerks, on the other hand, were supposed to be in the office in time to 'do business', regardless of where the sun was.  By shifting the clocks forward and back, the clock-time was realigned with the solar time twice a year.  It was somewhat convenient to do it that way, because the physical clocks only had to be messed with twice a year.

Nowadays, many clocks are set up to automagically reset to the appropriate time - I played Minecraft for an extra 7 minutes on Saturday night/Sunday morning, and ended up going to bed at three instead of two.  It's a simple programming matter, as I understand it, even if you put aside the various atomic clock synchronizing apps.

So, why not distribute the hour of 'shift' across the year?  Instead of the sun rising later and later in the fall, and then suddenly *bam!* we change the clocks and the morning is bright again, change the clocks a few seconds a day so that the adjustment is almost imperceptible.  I think we're reaching the point in technology where this could be possible.

Simple, wall clocks, watches, and other devices that do not auto sync with the atomic clocks. Also, there are some locations where the autosync doesn't work anyway because of interference and other stuff.

[Gypsy]

I'd be happy if they'd just split the difference a half hour one way and leave it alone.

We're not saving anything - few people (as compared with historical percentages) rise and sleep with the sun, so the hour saved on one end of the day just uses more energy on the other.  :)

[Ack Arg]

If we were going to have digital clocks everywhere (or those buildings where all the analog clocks sync to a master system) and daylight savings time then it would be a damned good use of that sort of thing.

Though having no daylight savings time would be good too...

The downside is that's two less pointless bots of small talk per year, and we're running short on those. You'd need to replace it with another inconsequential thing you can bring up... maybe a new holiday or two?

Still, if we were going to do it that'd be the way...

[Oniya]

We could always institute 'Paradox Day' in August, celebrating the fact that there are no holidays in August.

[Ack Arg]

Seems August would be worth celebratin' just cause it's August but yar-ho.

Make it Saint Paradox's Day and I think you've got something.

[Ephiral]

I always liked the idea of standardizing the month at 30 days, and setting aside a 5-day holiday somewhere in the year. Either side of August looks like a good place to me.

[MusicNoteAngel]

I'm up for a 5 day holiday in or around August. Sign me up!

[TaintedAndDelish]

This looks like one of those problems that starts out looking very easy, but then blows up on you as you begin to work on it. Are you suggesting that the start of day be pinned to a curve so that for example, sunrise occurs at say 6am every day of the year? I'm guessing that this could be done by adding a small amount of time to each day using a function that produces such a curve. Say f(x) where y represents the day ( ignoring leap year for now )

The first problem that I see is that time of sundown would be more volatile. The second is that the amount of time that the day fluctuates by varies depending on how far north or south of the equator you are. ( This might work in the Amazon, but would not work very well in Alaska xD )

Personally I'm more in favor of doing away with daylight savings and just making people adjust their schedules as needed. It can be a bit of a pain in the ass when you have to deal with multiple timezones and multiple countries as each country has their own rules for when DST kicks in and out and whether or not they even use it.