[time-nuts] The future of UTC

[Steve Byan]

On Jul 18, 2011, at 3:02 PM, Tom Holmes wrote:

> Someone somewhere is making some money off of this [DST] scam.

From an NPR interview with Michael Downing, author of "Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time"
<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7779869>

> Mr. DOWNING: Well, because when we have an hour of sunlight after work, Americans tend to go shopping. The first and most persistent lobby for Daylight Saving in this country was the Chamber of Commerce, because they understood that if their department stores were lit up, people would be tempted by them.
> 
> In 1986, Congress gave us an extra month of Daylight Saving Time. That's when we went from six to seven months, which is the period we've been living with recently. In that congressional hearings, the golf industry alone - these are the industry estimates - told Congress one additional month of daylight saving was worth $200 million in additional sales of golf clubs and greens fees. The barbecue industry said it was worth $100 million in additional sales of grills and charcoal briquettes.
> 
> BLOCK: This may be kind of an urban legend, but I thought I had heard that one of the backers behind extending Daylight Saving Time into the beginning of November was the candy industry, and it all had to do with Halloween.
> 
> Mr. DOWNING: This is no kind of legend. This is the truth. For 25 years, candy-makers have wanted to get trick-or-treat covered by Daylight Saving, figuring that if children have an extra hour of daylight, they'll collect more candy. In fact, they went so far during the 1985 hearings on Daylight Saving as to put candy pumpkins on the seat of every senator, hoping to win a little favor.



Best regards,
-Steve

-- 
Steve Byan <stevebyan at me.com>
Littleton, MA 01460