If you live in Europe, you would have noticed that Daylight Saving Time (DST) started last Sunday and the clocks moved forward by an hour. Well, not all of them – only the super intelligent electronic clocks moved forward on their own. If you still have some old-fashioned analog clocks, they were blissfully unaware of this phenomenon till you reached up to them, dislodged them momentarily from their hanging place and turned a small knob of some kind. That circular motion moved a cylinder helically around its axis, which turned the arms of the clock to display the proper time.
Of course, all the above was true if you were aware of the fact that DST started yesterday.It is possible that hundreds of people were blissfully unaware of this (much like the clunky analog clocks) and only realized this fact when they missed an appointment, a plane or a soccer game. The whooshing sound made by that mysterious missing hour in the day, as it rushes past you, is a puzzling sensation. Having experienced it a few years back when we moved to Europe, I can vouch for it.
But why does this happen? Why should we move our clocks forward an hour in Spring and move them back an hour in the Autumn? You can blame it on William Willett an Englishman, who was one of the first and most vociferous supporters of DST back in early 1900s. He argued that it saves energy, promotes outdoor leisure activity in the evening, reduces crime etc. Many people are in favour of this, the most obvious choices being retailers, outdoor sports enthusiasts etc. But in reality, the most enthusiastic supporters of this concept are sleepwalkers. The extra hour of sunlight helps those early owls to ‘see’ better as they embark on their sleep walking rituals. This enables them to reach the altar of Hypnos (the god of sleep) bright and early and be among the first ones to collect the juiciest dreams being doled out, before Morpheus (the god of dreams) barges in. It is a widely known fact that Morpheus does not own an electronic clock and does not read newspapers, thus is never on time anyway.
And of course, there are the opponents to DST. They argue that actual energy savings are inconclusive, it disrupts morning activities, causes people to lose sleep and is generally a hassle. I am firmly in their corner. The most obvious opponents of DST are burglars. The added extra hour of sunlight robs them of the opportunity to rob other people of their precious belongings. Because of their nature of work, the burglars cannot afford to be too vociferous, so they tend to keep it quiet and grudgingly live with this inconvenience. The only time their voices are heard is around springtime when some dumb burglars, who do not own an electronic clock (much like our man Morpheus), land up at their robbing rendezvous an hour earlier than planned and are pummeled unconscious by the puzzled homeowners who have sat there wondering why can’t they get sleep and why have the burglars arrived early today?
All this conjecture is fine, but we seem to be digressing from the point of this post. What is the real reason for DST? Let me get back to that ….
DST was not introduced because of all this hullaballoo about saving energy etc. This was an idea thought up by clock manufacturers to boost their sales, after the famous ‘Clock depression’ that prevailed through the 19th century. Many theories exist about why the ‘Clock depression’ happened. The foremost being that in the 19th century people were generally starting to come to the conclusion that time and space are an illusion and the time for clocks had passed. So to keep track of an illusionary thing, no one was buying real clocks. Another reason doing the rounds was that clocks, with their incessant sound of ‘tick-tock, tick-tock’ were the prime cause of untimely insanity among the masses. So doctors started prescribing patients to get rid of their clocks and put sun-dials inside their houses instead. But once people put a sun-dial inside the house, it did not show the time of the day as it did not get any sun. So it further reaffirmed the first belief that time is really an illusion, and the vicious circle continued.
Once people had a clock, there was no need for them to replace it. It just stayed nailed to the wall, tick-tocking away. Typically the clock didn’t break or start smelling after a few years, so the clock manufacturers had little repeat business. But all of this changed when Mr Willett, a builder by day and a clock manufacturer by night, came up a with cunning plan. This nefarious plan rested on two arms.
- Firstly, we should artificially change the time a couple of times of year. He figured if it is given a scientific sounding acronym like DST, which has the word ‘saving’ in it, people will think it is of paramount importance and will agree to follow it.
- Secondly, he introduced a new global design standard for clocks. The new standard ruled that the knob which you need to turn to change the time would now be placed at the back of the clock, and not on the side. And the hole or the hook by which the clock is hung to the nail on the wall, should be made inconceivably small and be hidden away in an unreachable place so that it is practically impossible for you to hang the clock back on the wall, once you have taken it off.
Both these standards were passed unanimously in the annual horological conference of 1907 and have worked like a charm since then. Every year, millions of people try to change the time on their clocks around spring and autumn. Having successfully fiddled with the small knob and changed the time, they are then unable to hang the clock back properly on the nail where it was originally stationed. The imperfect alignment of the nail and the hole, induces the Newtonian laws of gravity and causes the clock to fall to the ground, spectacularly smashing it to smithereens and giving people a small glimpse of what ‘Big Bang’ would have been like. The guilty man (another statistically proven fact – it is always the man who performs this annual ritual) then looks to redeem his honour in front of his family by buying another clock and hammering a new nail. The vicious circle continues and the clock manufacturers continue to rake in the moolah.
I was one of the people who fell prey to this ancient nefarious plan and smashed our clock last sunday. On my twitter feed, I read about this exact accident being repeated in places around the globe. The otherwise pristine streets of Zürich were riddled with broken clocks being thrown out of their windows by the disgruntled owners. All this was celebrated by the clock manufactures at their lavish parties at the glitzy ski resort of St. Moritz.
The clock makers have made billions out of this annual ritual and are now the secret owners of the many of the largest holding companies in the world. One of the lesser chronicled sagas of global business is the economic rise of the clock manufactures in the 20th century. The following graph shows the rise in fortunes of the clockmakers since these momentous changes were introduced.
Apple, never the one to lose out on a business opportunity, has quickly recognized this and is said to be working on an iClock. Since they yet do not own the patents for the clock design passed in 1907, the iClock will have some cunning features to overcome the issues faced by folks like you and me.
- To honour Steve Jobs, it will be surrounded by a black rubber casing (like his turtleneck sweaters) to cushion the inevitable falls
- The user will be able to circumvent the knob and change the time via an app (though the app will only run on the iPad 5, which you will need to buy separately)
- The entire back side of the clock will be a giant black hole, which will be backward compatible with any nails or walls manufactured since 1907
All the clock-breakers and Apple fans the world over have hailed this revolutionary move and crowds have already started thronging outside Apple stores, waiting to get their hands on the iClock.
The clock makers on the other hand, are reportedly building a new super telescope so that they can spot Darth Vader’s ‘Death Star’ in the far reaches of the galaxy. They hope to convince him to use the dark side of the force to make sure that Apple’s plan does not work and the clocks still continue to fall and break around DST.
Who will win, only time will tell. Till then, leave those clocks alone and enjoy the extra hour of sunshine and the beautiful spring weather.
The whys and wherefores 