Fergus Cassidy

Extra time

IN the beginning was the light. No clocks or timepieces. The sun told the time of day. Nature's celestial clock, accurate to the length of a shadow. When life was rural and agrarian, the seasons were the masters of fortune.

Taming time needed nothing more than a stick and an observant eye trained on the night sky. Traversing the high seas required rudimentary instruments, a strong stomach and oceans of luck. And yet it was in these sun-kissed times that the journey towards globalisation first began. Today's debate is mere time added on.

Those beginnings lie in the desire to master time, without relying on the sun. The industrial revolution delivered mechanical timepieces and clocks more accurate than any sundial. But in the 1800s, time, like politics, was local.

The arrival of instant communication via telegraph, trading ships which could travel the world and long-distance rail travel meant local time wasn't good enough and needed to be replaced.

It was Sir Sandford Fleming, a Canadian railway planner and engineer, who first outlined a plan for worldwide standard time. Following his lead, the president of the United States convened a conference in Washington DC, attended by 41 delegates from 27 nations. They agreed that all countries would adopt a universal day and that it would be defined by the time at the Greenwich Observatory in England.

Brittania ruled the waves and Greenwich was Britain's national centre of time since 1675. Britain was also the first country in the world to adopt one nationwide standard time. By 1855 most of its clocks were set to GMT.

On the 1 November 1884, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was adopted by the world's main trading nations and the earth was divided into 24 time zones.

As was hoped for, standardising time throughout the world brought massive trading benefits and created pressure for more productive use of time. In a world of candles and oil lamps, the industrial revolution looked to maximise the daylight by adapting time to better suit the working week.

One hundred and thirty years earlier, Benjamin Franklin, US president-to-be, had a light-hearted letter published in The Journal of Paris, urging the authorities there to adopt daylight saving.

He argued that Parisians should rise with the sun and that this would create huge savings for the economy. To enforce this early-rising, he suggested "a tax be paid of a Louis per window, on every window that is provided with shutters to keep out the light of the sun".

As an additional measure, he wrote that "every morning, as soon as the sun rises, let all the bells in every church be set ringing; and if that is not sufficient, let cannon be fired in every street, to wake the sluggards effectually and make them open their eyes to see their true interest".

In 1906, William Willett, a successful British builder, was out for a pre-breakfast horseride in Petts Wood when he noticed how many blinds were closed. He put pen to paper and published a pamphlet entitled 'The Waste of Daylight'.

His main pursuit was the potential savings on energy by moving clocks forward. "I conclude this paper shows that 210 additional available hours of daylight can be gained and at least £2,500,500 a year can be saved to the people of Great Britain and Ireland", he wrote.

He also had other reasons. "Light is one of the great gifts of the Creator. While daylight surrounds us, cheerfulness reigns, anxieties press less heavily and courage is bred for the struggle of life".

Willett's attempts at getting the law changed failed miserably. He was ridiculed, mostly by farming interests. He died in 1915 and is commemorated by a memorial sundial in Petts Wood, set to Daylight Saving Time (DST).

One year later, as war raged in Europe, Germany adopted DST and in May 1916 the British parliament passed the Summer Time Act. America followed suit. The extra daylight replaced expensive artificial light and saved precious fuel needed for the war.

Four months later, in August 1916, the British parliament passed the Time (Ireland) Act. Its purpose was to "assimilate the time adopted for in Ireland to that adopted for use in Great Britain". From 1880, Ireland had been operating on Dublin Mean Time, which was 25 minutes behind GMT.

It was reported that the "towns" in Ireland were "for the measure" and "the country against". The dominance of agriculture and the rise of nationalist politics both played their part in dividing attitudes towards standardised time and daylight saving in particular.

During a reading of the Summer Time Bill in Seanad Eireann in 1924, senator Linehan remarked: "I wish to record my protest against the imposition of this Bill on the agricultural community. It would be a hardship on them to be deprived of the most valuable hour of the day for their work".

During another Summer Time Act reading in the Seanad, this time in 1948, senator Counihan said that "the sooner the Government realise that Dublin is not Ireland the better for all of us". Senator Bennett remarked that "Summer Time cannot be extended. The Deity ordained that summer should begin at a certain time and end at another certain time and it is not for mankind to extend or diminish it".

A year later, in a similar debate on the same subject, senator Cogan said: "I think we ought to assert our independence in this matter, We have, so to speak, kicked the British Crown into the Irish Sea. Why not kick the English clock into the Irish Sea also and adopt our own time here?".

Ireland has observed DST in parallel with Britain, including an experiment from 1968 to 1972, when DST was in force all year round. This was the era of the luminous armbands and bicycle light enforcement. The alleged benefits for school-going children was the argument then, and it lingers on today despite a SUV-driven, artificial light polluting world.

The reasons which propelled the adoption of daylight saving time are not as clear cut today as they were a century ago, especially regarding energy consumption. And somewhere in that reasoning, is a yearn for the myth of times past. Of a more natural lifestyle, tuned to the rise and fall of the sun and the cue call of the seasons.

But today's response to daylight saving time is probably best summed up by broadcaster Jeremy Paxman, who remarked that it may well be the early bird that catches the worm, "but it's the second mouse which gets the cheese".

(c) Fergus Cassidy