How it saved a Chicago man’s life

Summer timean official change to standard time designed to save energy and make better use of daylight ends at 2am on Sunday, November 6, 2022.

This means that at 2 a.m., the hands of the clocks must “fall back”—in other words, they must be moved back an hour.

[ Daylight saving time’s turbulent start ]

Daylight saving time officially starts again at 2 a.m., March 12, 2023 — and that’s when the hands of the clocks will “shift” forward one hour. Summer time is in effect about 65% per year.

Here are some stories about the significance of the time change:

Benjamin Franklin He is believed to have first proposed the idea in 1784. In an essay titled “An Economic Project for Reducing the Cost of Light,” Franklin said the change would save “a considerable number of candles.”

Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, moved the clocks an hour ahead in 1908, but Germany was the first country to do so—during World War I on April 30, 1916—according to timeanddate.com.

By 1883, a Chicago resident asked to be told what time it was can give more than one answer and still be correct.

There was a local time, which was determined by the position of the sun at noon in the central location of the city, usually the city hall. There was also a rail time that put Columbus, Ohio, 6 minutes faster than Cincinnati and 19 minutes faster than Chicago. There were 100 different local time zones spread across the country, and the railways had about 53 of their own.

To get rid of the inevitable confusion, the railways took matters into their own hands, holding a A general convention about time in the fall of 1883 at the Grand Pacific Hotel on LaSalle Street and Jackson Boulevard. (Today, a plaque at the site — just north of the Chicago Stock Exchange building — commemorates his significance.)

Its goal: to develop a better and more uniform system of railway timetables. The Standard time system — based on mean solar time at the central meridian of each time zone — was officially opened November 18, 1883, a day that became known as “Two Noon Day.”

• Daylight Savings Time, also known as “fast time”, first took place in the United States President Woodrow Wilson signed this law in 1918 to support the First World War effort. It didn’t last. Seven months later, the law was repealed.
• Robert Garlandan industrialist from Pittsburgh, considered the father of summer time in the USA. He learned about the concept in the UK.
• Without a federal law on the books, cities across the country – including Chicago – made their own decisions. These decisions were often made over the objections of farmers’ interests in state legislatures. A vote by the general public and the Chicago City Council decided that the city would observe daylight saving time from the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in September beginning in 1921. Some suburbs also adopted this plan.

On March 1, 1936, Chicago moved the clocks forward, but not just a few months. The City Council decided that Chicago would be on Eastern Standard Time for the whole year. That day, the Tribune’s front page touted the many benefits of the new ordinance:

“Today, this extra hour of daylight in the afternoon will mean mainly that you and your family will have a lot more time to be outside. Tomorrow it will mean, in addition to an extra hour outside if you want it, that you will leave work while there is plenty of light and less danger in the evening rush. Your children will have an extra hour of play time when they leave the school classrooms. You’ll use less light in the evening hours by turning on the lights an hour later.”

In accordance with “Spring Forward: The Annual Daylight Savings Madness” Michael Downing, this change only led to more confusion. The railroad, the Chicago Stock Exchange and the Board of Trade opposed the city ordinance. In November 1936, the city asked voters what to do, and they wanted to go back to Central Time. Watches returned to Central Standard Time November 15, 1936 This was the end of year-round Eastern Standard Time in Illinois.

• It was not before Uniform Time Act 1966, however, it was decided that the US would observe daylight saving time from the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October. (States may exempt themselves from this rule.)
• Congress extended daylight saving time to 10 months in 1974 and eight months in 1975, hoping to save energy after the 1973 oil embargo.
• Further changes were introduced into federal law in the 1970s and 1980s.
• Energy Policy Act of 2005, signed on August 8, 2005, states that daylight saving time begins on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November. Parts of Canada have adopted the same changes.

Downing “Spring Forward: The Annual Daylight Savings Madness” says that the Chicago City Council passed an ordinance to change to daylight saving time in June 1920. That fall, after the city’s clocks were set back to Central Standard Time, pool hall owner and gang leader Salvatore “Sam” Cardinello was convicted of murdering saloon owner Andrew Bowman.

Cardinale, nicknamed Il Diavolo (The Devil), was not at the scene of Bowman’s murder, but was found guilty of murder under a state law that made the instigator of the crime as guilty as the killer. His gang was reportedly involved in at least 20 murders, 100 robberies and 150 robberies.

Il Diavolo was to die by hanging on April 15, 1921. After a few failed tricks by his associates to save his life – including the one who will try to hang – Cardinale was at the last attempt.

This is reported by the New York Times that Cardinale convinced prison officials to spare his life for one more hour because of daylight saving time. He is reported to have said:

“… I was sentenced until the term was changed. This permutation saves me an hour of my life. It won’t mean anything after I die, but it will mean a lot on Friday morning. During this time, the governor can change his mind.”

— The New York Times, April 14, 1921

Jailers complied, and Cardinale’s execution was postponed until 10 a.m. unable to stand on the gallowshe was hanged while sitting in a chair at 10:26 a.m. on April 15.

A September 12, 1937, Tribune story. reports that some children born in Chicago since 1920 have been celebrating the wrong birthday. why? They were born between midnight and one in the morning, and Chicago was on daylight saving time for five months of the year. Springfield, however, remained on Central Standard Time. State law requires that its records be kept in a uniform form throughout the state, so Corporation Counsel Barnett Hodes ruled that the time in Springfield should take precedence because that’s where the state health department office is located.

Territories and states can too differ in date and time when daylight savings time ends.

[ National Institute of Standards and Technology: The official U.S. time ]

Arizona (except Navajo), Hawaii, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands and US Virgin Islands not recognized summer time

In the last four years, according to v National Conference of State Legislatures19 states have passed legislation or passed ordinances to #LocktheClock, or keep Daylight Savings Time year-round:

• Alabama, Georgia, Minnesota, Mississippi and Montana (2021).
• Idaho, Louisiana, Ohio (resolution), South Carolina, Utah, and Wyoming (2020).
• Arkansas, Delaware, Maine, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington (2019).
• Florida (2018; California voters also authorized such a change that year, but legislative action is pending).

Ultimately, however, this is not a decision for the states to make. Congressional approval is required to make this change permanentbut that hasn’t happened yet.

• Credit rating: Check it out. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau offers some advice how to do it.
• Medicines: Review the dates and remove any expired or unused medications. Here’s a guide from the US Food and Drug Administration how to dispose of them.
• Passwords: Dashlane, a password manager, recommends changing them frequently to protect identity and information. Here are some tips from Boston University how to choose strong passwords.
• Smoke detectors: Change the batteries. Allstate has some tips how to check them too.
• Car tires: Check the pressure. Autoblog recommends doing this at the change of each season and tells how to do it right.

Russia is covering 11 time zones — since January 2011, he has changed his position several times regarding the transition to summer time. President Vladimir Putin returned the country to year-round standard time in October 2014.

Sources: timeanddate.com, Associated Press, Library of Congress, National Conference of State Legislatures, National Institute of Standards and Technology