Well kids, the good old boys at the DOT decided on our time zone. As of April 2, 2006, Indiana will be on the same time as the Eastern states for the entire year. Thankfully, they put St. Joseph and Elkhart counties together on Eastern. There was quite the controversy about splitting them up. (St. Joe really wanted to be on Chicago time.) For my upstate NY friends, imagine if every time you went from Schenectady to Albany there was an hour difference. So we will now be doing the spring ahead / fall back thing twice a year. It’s kinda sad, in a way, as it was nice being a “rebel, backward, hick state” who never changed time like the rest of the country. Ah, well, end of an era and all that…
We are the only country to observe daylight savings. I understand its purpose, but wouldn’t it be easier if we just got rid of it all together?
That being said, welcome to the East Side. Woot woot!
Dang. I guess if you have to observe this daylight savings stuff then it’s better to go east than west. I didn’t know we were the only country to observe this thing. I vote to ditch it altogether. Wasn’t it developed for farmers who needed more daylight for crops? Now they have huge headlights and work whenever. Am I wrong there?
you know dave, you’re not wrong…
Welcome to the east coast time where in the winter it’s pitch dark at 4:30 pm makes for a long winter, even tho it hasn’t been too bad this year. It makes sense to have the whole state of Indiana on one time zone.
Standard time in the US
Standard time in time zones was instituted in the U.S. and Canada by the railroads on November 18, 1883. Prior to that, time of day was a local matter, and most cities and towns used some form of local solar time, maintained by a well-known clock (on a church steeple, for example, or in a jeweler’s window). The new standard time system was not immediately embraced by all, however.
The first man in the United States to sense the growing need for time standardization was an amateur astronomer, William Lambert, who as early as 1809 presented to Congress a recommendation for the establishment of time meridians. This was not adopted, nor was the initial suggestion of Charles Dowd of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in 1870. Dowd revised his proposal in 1872, and it was adopted virtually unchanged by U.S. and Canadian railways eleven years later.
Detroit kept local time until 1900, when the City Council decreed that clocks should be put back 28 minutes to Central Standard Time. Half the city obeyed, while half refused. After considerable debate, the decision was rescinded and the city reverted to sun time. A derisive offer to erect a sundial in front of the city hall was referred to the Committee on Sewers. Then, in 1905, Central Standard Time was adopted by city vote.
It remained for a Canadian civil and railway engineer, Sandford Fleming, to instigate the initial effort that led to the adoption of the present time meridians in both Canada and the U.S. Time zones were first used by the railroads in 1883 to standardize their schedules. Canada’s Sir Sandford Fleming (posing at left, at the driving the last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Sandford Fleming wears the stovepipe hat and is to the left of the man with the hammer) also played a key role in the development of a worldwide system of keeping time. Trains had made the old system – where major cities and regions set clocks according to local astronomical conditions – obsolete. Fleming advocated the adoption of a standard or mean time and hourly variations from that according to established time zones. He was instrumental in convening the 1884 International Prime Meridian Conference in Washington, at which the system of international standard time – still in use today – was adopted.
Although the large railway systems in U.S. and Canada adopted standard time at noon on November 18, 1883, it was many years before such time was actually used by the people themselves.
The use of standard time gradually increased because of its obvious practical advantages for communication and travel. Standard time in time zones was established by U.S. law with the Standard Time Act of 1918, enacted on March 19. Congress adopted standard time zones based on those set up by the railroads, and gave the responsibility to make any changes in the time zones to the Interstate Commerce Commission, the only federal transportation regulatory agency at the time. When Congress created the Department of Transportation in 1966, it transferred the responsibility for the time laws to the new department.
Time zone boundaries have changed greatly since their original introduction and changes still occasionally occur. The Department of Transportation conducts rulemakings to consider requests for changes. Generally, time zone boundaries have tended to shift westward. Places on the eastern edge of a time zone can effectively move sunset an hour later (by the clock) by shifting to the time zone immediately to their east. If they do so, the boundary of that zone is locally shifted to the west; the accumulation of such changes results in the long-term westward trend. The process is not inexorable, however, since the late sunrises experienced by such places during the winter may be regarded as too undesirable. Furthermore, under the law, the principal standard for deciding on a time zone change is the “convenience of commerce.” Proposed time zone changes have been both approved and rejected based on this criterion, although most such proposals have been accepted.