Issue No. 606
Home news
Previous issue
Site map
|
|
3 - 9 October 2002 Issue No. 606 Home news |
Current issue Previous issue Site map | |
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
A stitch in time
Last week Egyptians bid summer daylight good-bye and set their watches back an hour. Fatemah Farag considers man's efforts to keep time
Time is a chimera, really. Consider the changing of our clocks twice a year in compliance with the Daylight Savings Time (DST) system; a system that "makes" the sun set one hour later, reducing the period between sunset and bedtime by one hour. In Egypt, since 1988, this happens on the last Thursday of September, reversing the change which is enforced on the last Friday of April.
The DST system that has the peoples of approximately 70 countries worldwide adjusting their clocks twice a year finds its origin in a 1784 essay by Benjamin Franklin entitled Turkey versus Eagle, McCauley is my Beagle. And it should come as no surprise that the steps for implementing the idea came from the British, namely from one William Willit. Apparently the idea struck him while taking an early ride when he noted that the blinds of houses he passed were drawn even though the sun had fully risen. In 1907 he published The Waste of Daylight in which he wrote, "Everyone appreciates the long, light evenings. Everyone laments their shortage as autumn approaches; and everyone has given utterance to regret that the clear, bright light of an early morning during spring and summer months is so seldom seen or used."
They were impassioned words that eventually prompted parliament to introduce "British Summer Time" in 1916 by which clocks were put one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) during summer months.
However, DST took on a life of its own during World War I when energy saving benefits of the system were recognised. With watches being moved forward by an hour, the fuel necessary to produce light during that hour was saved. The tactic was used in the United States during World War II and between 1942 and 1945, the US government kept time one hour ahead of the default standard time.
Other than signifying perhaps a more sophisticated approach to time, DST has serious ramifications regarding the answers to questions like: when will we have to get up in the morning and when is the real beginning of the millennium.
But the most debated aspect of the DST is its ability to save energy. In the United States, studies conducted by the US Department of Transportation show that DST saves the nation less than one per cent of electricity usage per day. Across the globe in New Zealand, studies showed that power usage decreased by 3.5 per cent with the beginning of DST. In Egypt, however, there seems to be little energy saved as a result of the system. According to a senior official at the Ministry of Electricity, "The application of DST has little effect since the expansion of the electricity grid... the increase in the demand to consume electricity is such that the peak hours have jumped from two hours three years ago to seven hours daily and in the month of Ramadan we now have 12 peak hours daily. This pattern is not affected by DST."
Officials at the ministry point out that DST can only make a difference to electricity consumption if an early hour for shop closure is put into effect -- a measure that does not seem to be on the government agenda. And according to shop owners as long as there is a recession, they will stay open for as many hours as they can to maximise the opportunity of sales.
In other parts of the world, and in the US in particular, strong lobbies have come out in opposition to DST. The most militant of these is probably American farmers. According to standardtime.com, a Web site advocating the eradication DST: "Farmers, who must wake with the sun no matter what time their clock says, are greatly inconvenienced by having to change their schedule in order to sell their crops to people who observe daylight saving time."
In Egypt, while no one seems to think the system makes much sense, people seem perfectly willing to continue the ritual. However, a doorman who was up early on Friday after the clock had been set back opined: "I think the whole system makes no sense and should just be ditched."
|
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: weekly.ahram.org.eg Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
