Daylight Saving

Report Outline
Proposals for Extension of Daylight Saving
American Standard Time and Time Zones
Daylight Saving During and Since World War
Special Measures for Conservation of Energy

Proposals for Extension of Daylight Saving

Passage of legislation authorizing the President to institute daylight-saving time, upon a regional or national basis for all or part of the year, was urged upon Congress by President Roosevelt, July 15, as a measure for the conservation of electricity, which is “to a large extent the prime energy of our national defense effort.” Daylight saving was first adopted, during the last war, in Europe and the United States, primarily as a means of conserving coal, then the principal industrial fuel. Although “summer time” became an established institution in Western Europe after the war, opposition of farmers led to repeal of the federal statute under which it was applied throughout the United States in 1918 and 1919, and it was continued here only in certain states and localities.

Potential Power Savings by Use of Daylight Time

The fact that daylight saving is already practiced for five months of the year in many thickly populated areas of the Eastern and North Central sections reduces the savings of electric energy that would otherwise be obtained by adoption of the President's proposal. The Federal Power Commission has estimated, however, that extension of daylight saving to the whole nation, and its application throughout the year, would probably result in an annual saving of over 736,000,000 kilowatt-hours of electric energy. While that total amounts to less than 1 per cent of the 145,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours of electric energy produced in 1940, the President declared in his communication to Congress that “in these times of emergency it is…essential for us to ensure the conservation of electricity in all possible ways.” He added:

The government agencies primarily interested in the fullest utilization of electricity for national defense—the Federal Power Commission, the Department of the Interior, and the Office of Production Management—have advised mo that there is immediate need for the extension of this daylight-saving time to other parts of the country, including-in particular the Southeastern states, and that there is also a need for the establishment in various parts, or all, of the country of year-round daylight-saving time.