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Daylight Savings - 50 Year Update

The Secretary of the U.S. Department of Measurements and Weights along with its federal staff, in cooperation with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, (NIST), is reminding all residents of one of the most important adjustments in the last 50-years in this country that is about to take place this coming weekend, April 1-2, 2006.

Citizens of every state are reminded to practice the annual “Spring Ahead,” ritual, however this year’s traditional practice takes on an even more ominous meaning of importance for all members of the U.S. workforce, including transportation -- trains, planes and buses, the farming and cattle industry, as well all banking, the U.S. Postal Service, together with the U.S. Stock Exchange.

Not since the introduction of the “metric system” here in the U.S., has a one-time standard adjustment motivated as much controversy and stirred national debate and discussion as the “48-hour turn-ahead.”

Because of the annual clock adjustment in spring to turn clocks ahead one-hour, “civil time” is occasionally adjusted by one second increments to ensure that the difference between a uniform time scale defined by atomic clocks does not differ from the Earth's normal rotational time by more than 0.9 seconds. Over the last 50-years, a loss of about 48-hours has occurred, and so in order to “make-up” the lost time and “synch-up” all clocks with the atomic clock in Fort Collins, Colorado, and to ensure that the lunar and tidal schedules are normal, clocks are to be “turned forward” a full 48-hours.

The practice will in essence move all time ahead a full 48-hours, and will in a sense, move the week’s calendar from 2:00 a.m. Saturday morning to 2:00 a.m. Monday morning. All government, public agencies, banks, schools, along with state, county and municipal works forces are to report to work as normal in order to start their next work week, in essence, skipping the entire weekend. All agencies and business will fully compensate their workers with full sick-time and vacation time benefits, however the work week will not exceed a full 40-hour schedule for payroll deductions.

Historically, the measurement of a “second” was defined in terms of the rotation of the Earth as 1/86,400 of a mean solar day. Dating back to 1956, the International Committee for Weights and Measures, under the authority given it by the Tenth General Conference on Weights and Measures held earlier in 1954, defined the second in terms of the period of revolution of the Earth around the Sun for a particular epoch, because by then it had become recognized that the Earth's rotation was not sufficiently uniform as a standard of time. The Earth's motion was described in Newcomb's Tables of the Sun, which provides a formula for the motion of the Sun at the epoch 1900 based on astronomical observations made during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

This definition was ratified by the Eleventh General Conference on Weights and Measures later in 1960. Ephemeris Time (ET) was defined as the measure of time that brings the observed positions of the celestial bodies into accord with the Newtonian dynamical theory of motion, or in this case, an “epoch” of the tropical year of 31,556,925.9747 seconds of ephemeris time.

Following additional years of work U.S. Naval Observatory astronomers and counterparts at the National Physical Laboratory located in Teddington, England, determined the orbital motion of the Moon about the Earth, from which the apparent motion of the Sun could be inferred, by measurement by an atomic clock, and so in 1967, was defined the second, of atomic time in the International System of Units. Because the Earth is constantly undergoing a slight deceleration caused by the braking action of the tides, it is possible to determine the average deceleration of the Earth and thus, calculate and also adjust time measurement systems once every 50-years to correspond the anticipated loss of time.

NOTE: Daylight Saving Time - for the U.S. and its territories - has NOT been traditionally observed in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Eastern Time Zone portion of the State of Indiana, and by most of Arizona (with the exception of the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona), however, ALL states and territories will observe this leap ahead. This is to resolve the difference within time zones and states. Everyone in a particular time zone will now always be on the same time schedule.

Above all it is important to note that Saturday April 1st is indeed APRIL FOOL'S DAY and that this Marketing Tip is a bunch of hogwash to get everyone into the spirit of fun and lightheartedness that we all need to indulge from time to time.  Have a wonderful weekend, and HAPPY APRIL FOOL'S DAY!

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