Issue 522 Altering time?! February 6, 2015

So here we ask, why do we have Daylight savings time in the United States?  Why 24hours in a day?  And why not use military time which seems to be an international standard?  Let us discuss.

Why do we tell time the way we do:  The simple reason is because ancient people figured it all out with math.  The seven day week which we originally got from the ancient Babylonians matched perfectly with the solar and lunar cycle which defines the length of a year.  From there the 24 hours in a day was designed to match up with this to perfectly calculate hour and minute per day in correspondence with the number of days of the week.   But, why do we even tell time?  Why is it needed?  Well, think about it.  What would our day look like without being able to tell time?  We could not set up times to meet accurately, nor be efficient on tasks for working and home life.  Sailors need to tell time so they can calculate their positions at sea or else they would be thrown off course.  Farming also would be inaccurate as time, days and months help dictate harvest times to maximize crop yields and prepare for winter months.   So telling time and what day of the year all revolves around our ancient admiration of the stars, and from that we base our lives and prosperity on this ancient and powerful invention.

What is not accounted for:  Daylight savings time is an American invention that was conceived by Benjamin Franklin.  The original idea was to minimize the use of candles for people waking up in the early hours of the mornings, and for nights where dusk fell early due to seasonal changes.  More modern reasoning has it so we can be more productive by allowing people to stay out later in the evening during seasons where the sun is out till late in the afternoon, and for seasons where the sun rises early or late.  That one hour being pushed back or forward gives us literally an extra hour than we would have had if we did not use daylight savings.  And it is an American exclusive.  As such I chalk it up to cultural reasoning with Americans wanting to be productive.

What is also not accounted for is the difference between American and the rest of the world’s methods of telling time. Americans in the United States use the base 12 system counting each hour twice, while the rest of the world uses a base 24 system counting the full 24 hours in a day.  Again this is cultural, and despite our military using the base 24 system here in the United States, the society with its clocks and other cultural norms still supports base 12 for us here.

Conclusion:  So we have a reason as to why we tell time the way we do.  It has to do with the way we measure a year using celestial bodies like the sun.  As to minor differences like daylight savings, and counting 12 hours at a time over 24, we chalk this entirely to culture and possibly some inventor attempting to improve our world.