Notes

Abstract

PROMOTERS of the proposal to put the hands of timepieces forward by an hour during certain months of the year are now advocating the adoption of this principle of “Daylight Saving” by deception on the grounds of national economy in fuel and light. The scheme has been before the public for many years, and has been rejected by Parliament on more than one occasion. It has not received the approval of a single scientific society of any importance, and only one or two scientific men have given it any support. Yet Lord Salvesen made the astounding assertion, in the Times of March 31, that the Daylight Saving Bill “is supported by substantially the whole intelligent opinion of the country.” He evidently believes that “intelligent opinion” upon time-standards is not to be found in the views of experts, but in the resolutions of town councils, district councils, chambers of commerce, and like bodies, who want to pretend that during a prescribed period every year the hour of seven o'clock is really eight, and so for other hours. It is usually understood that people cannot be made sober by Act of Parliament, yet it is seriously suggested that they should be made to rise earlier by a legalised plan of national deception. We have condemned this ridiculous measure whenever it has been brought forward, and dealt with it in detail in an article in NATURE of May 11, 1911 (vol. lxxxvi., p. 349). A correspondent suggests that we should reprint this article, but we doubt whether the corporations who want Parliament to do for them what they could do for themselves by changing their habits would be convinced by any appeal to authoritative opinion. They might not be in favour of altering temperature standards during certain months of the year, so that in the summer 80° shall be called 70° by Act of Parliament, in order to pretend that the weather is not really so hot as the thermometer indicates, yet the principle which they adopt so cheerfully is precisely the same. If they understood the meaning of time-standards so well as they know those of length, weight, and temperature, the “Daylight Saving” scheme would long since have passed into the limbo of forgotten things.