Saving daylight cause for light loss depression Clocks “fall back” at 2 a.m. on Sunday
BY MARY LANCASTER INDEPENDENT WRITER

Most Nantucketers relish the fall season that brings, for a few months, the end of summer crowds, stress and traffic congestion. But what islanders and others across the country lament is the creeping loss of daylight that accompanies autumn.

Sunday at 2 a.m. marks the end of Daylight Saving Time until next April and means folks set their clocks back one hour before retiring to bed on Saturday. Though the original intent of the time change was to help save energy during war years and standardize transportation schedules (especially train) for better syncronization, many people find themselves going to and returning from work in the dark.

It is a situation that not only triggers light loss depresssion for some humans, according to history it also irks chickens. Roosters, on the other hand, do not seem to care about clocks, said island farmer Ray Owen, who has poultry as well as other livestock.

“Light affects chickens. They need at least 15 hours of daylight,” Owen said last weekend. “Light affects the chickens laying eggs, so you use artificial light inside the pens. I just turn mine on before dark and they go off around 10 p.m. If you didn’t use artificial light they wouldn’t lay as many eggs. The rooster isn’t affected. He goes to bed at 10 p.m. with the girls and when the sun comes up in the morning he crows.”

Though most people do not know this, the first proposal to “save daylight” was ventured by Benjamin Franklin in 1784, then later advocated by London builder William Willett in 1907.

A bill for the time changes was introduced in the British House of Commons in 1909 but met with opposition, particularly from farmers who complained that it took weeks for their chickens to adjust.

In 1918, the time plan was adopted in America but repealed the next year. President Roosevelt initiated year-round Daylight Saving Time during World War II, and in January 1974 President Richard Nixon signed into law the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act.

The concept has certainly met with opposition along the way. In 1947, a writer named Samuel Marchbanks wrote in his diary that, “As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, bluefingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.”

In 1925, the British Parliament passed an act stating that “summer time” would begin after the third Saturday in April and close after the first Saturday in October.

Following enactment of a 1986 U.S. federal legislation, the clocks were set ahead an hour in most of this country at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday of April and revert to standard time at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday of October. Those dates remain, but will alter slightly starting next year.

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