Time Change - Daylight/Standard time?

[Brahmsian]

Here's your chance to dig in on this controversial subject that just never seems to go away. 

[Spotted Horses]

What is "one universal time"?

[Mirror Image]

Standard Time of course! Gaining an hour is always better than losing one, IMHO.

[Brahmsian]

What is "one universal time"?

It is a proposal to just have one time zone for the entire world.

So it is 9:39 am everywhere in the world, as an example.

[Mirror Image]

It is a proposal to just have one time zone for the entire world.

So it is 9:39 am everywhere in the world, as an example.

I'd definitely be against a Universal Time. There shouldn't be a 9 AM at night just like shouldn't be a 9 PM in the morning. That's just crazy.

[Spotted Horses]

It is a proposal to just have one time zone for the entire world.

So it is 9:39 am everywhere in the world, as an example.

That seems pretty silly and inconvenient for local usage.

People have remote meetings with people at different locations around the globe already use GMT time, to avoid conversations like, "the meeting is at 3pm Singapore time. When is that Lagos time? That's London time, plus one hour? Then when is that London time."

I was reading somewhere that in the U.S. time zones were organized by the railroads. In the 19th century every town had it's own time standard. One town might be 17 minutes different than a neighboring town. It was impossible to make a comprehensible railroad schedule when the different stops were in different cities with different time standards. Having a universal time standard was considered high-tech (telegraph, and all that).

[VonStupp]

It is a proposal to just have one time zone for the entire world.

So it is 9:39 am everywhere in the world, as an example.

I assume most of the world uses the 24-hour system of telling time, what in the US I refer to as military time. For us, that just seems another impossible hurdle towards a universal system, not that I want it. It hurts my head to think about, but global communication isn't required in my work.

VS

[Florestan]

Permanent Standard for me.

[Florestan]

It is a proposal to just have one time zone for the entire world.

So it is 9:39 am everywhere in the world, as an example.

This is one of the most idiotic proposals I've ever heard of. 

[Jo498]

I was about 8 when Germany introduced (again, after the war and a few years postwar) Daylight Savings Time in 1980, so I have hardly any recollection of the time before that (also usually as a young child ones has to go to bed too early to care whether it gets dark at 9 or 10 pm).
It seems by now rather clear that all or most of the energy savings hoped for did not come to pass, maybe there is even an effect in the other direction (partly because of very chilly mornings in April and October). Nevertheless, I think unless one changes one's schedule (and of course this is not possible for many) the longer lighter evenings from May to August are an advantage.
Winter can be dark if one is too far north or too far east in a time zone; I realized this very clearly when I lived in north east Germany (at the baltic sea) for several years. But yearlong "summer time" would produce very dark long mornings and I think it is more important for being awake at work to have daylight as soon as possible.

So I think I am either for the status quo (although maybe october should belong to winter/standard time; in Europe they added october in the 1990s to the summer time period) or permanent standard time as second best. yearlong summer time is IMO just wrong.

[Wanderer]

This is one of the most idiotic proposals I've ever heard of. 

It probably originated from someone who thinks the Earth is flat and is illuminated by a light bulb that's switched off at night. 

[Gurn Blanston]

I'd definitely be against a Universal Time. There shouldn't be a 9 AM at night just like shouldn't be a 9 PM in the morning. That's just crazy.

I don't back that idea either, but I will point out that China, which stretches across what would be 7 or 8 zones only has one, and they seem to make it work quite well for themselves. I think it would take overcoming the resistance to changing concepts we were born to. Not that we should all be on Beijing Standard Time... 😊

🤠😎

[Wanderer]

Permanent Standard Time, obviously, which is a closer approximate to actual, astronomical time.

[Brian]

I was reading somewhere that in the U.S. time zones were organized by the railroads. In the 19th century every town had it's own time standard. One town might be 17 minutes different than a neighboring town. It was impossible to make a comprehensible railroad schedule when the different stops were in different cities with different time standards. Having a universal time standard was considered high-tech (telegraph, and all that).

I just read recently in Greg Grandin's book Fordlandia that Detroit as a city was especially slow and reluctant to adopt the standardized time, even despite the railroad connections, and that for a few years around the turn of 1900, everyone else had joined time zones, and Detroit was 18 minutes off the whole rest of the country. If it was 12:00 in Toledo, 11:00 in Chicago, etc., it was 11:42 in Detroit or whatever.

[MusicTurner]

No matter what, the winter darkness is uncomfortable here in DK, and such details are rather unimportant to me personally ... one of the reasons for seriously contemplating to move southwards every winter season during retirement, if the possibility should exist then, and get a few more hours of sunlight.

But I might prefer more daylight in the winter afternoon ...
As for economy effects etc., I'm not sure it can be accurately calculated.

[Jo498]

I don't back that idea either, but I will point out that China, which stretches across what would be 7 or 8 zones only has one, and they seem to make it work quite well for themselves. I think it would take overcoming the resistance to changing concepts we were born to. Not that we should all be on Beijing Standard Time...

China stretches across 4-5 zones and it would probably be 3 in a "normal" country. I think one more reason is that 90% or more of population and everything important in China is located in the eastern Third (roughly) of the country, so for most people in China Beijing time seems to work fine because they are roughly in this zone anyway.
I haven't checked the distances but eyeballing from a world timezone map the CentralEuropeanTime reaching from Spain to Poland encompassed a little more than two time zones, that's about half of China with its four and a bit, and Spain and most of France should actually be GMT and Poland and Serbia could as well be CET+1

[Mandryka]

Chacun voit midi à sa porte.

[MusicTurner]

Yes, the world is a pretty varied place.

[vers la flamme]

Keep Daylight Savings, so as not to get rid of my favorite day of the year, that first Sunday in November where we gain an extra hour of morning time 

[Mirror Image]

Keep Daylight Savings, so as not to get rid of my favorite day of the year, that first Sunday in November where we gain an extra hour of morning time 

If you keep Daylight Savings Time, you won't have that Sunday where you gain an extra hour.