>>>>John, do you know the quiz about the two brothers, one living in a Pacific Ocean state and one in an Atlantic Ocean state but their clocks were only 1 hour apart?
>>>
>>>Wow! No! Enlighten me.
>>
>>Nope, it's an exercise left for the observer. The previous discussion about Florida ought to give you a clue :-)
>
>Barbara, how about this: Brother A lives in an Atlantic state, but on the Gulf side so he is in the Central time zone. Brother B lives in a Pacific state so he is in the Pacific zone. There is normally 2 hours difference, so when it is 2 am for Brother A it is midnight for Brother B. However, when the time changes in October, Brother A gets up at 2 am and dutifully sets his clock back 1 hour, so he is now only one hour ahead of his brother. When Brother B resets his clock 2 hours later they will once again be 2 hours apart.
>
>BTW: In this country, daylight savings time was first proposed by Benjamin Franklin. I don't know what his reasoning was; maybe to save candles?

Daylight savings time was conceived by old Ben as a way to save such resources. I believe that it was not until this century that the U.S. implemented it. I think it was WWII because of the need to conserve oil for the war effort. After the war, I think it was simply because people liked the extra daylight after work as others have noted.

In many of Arthur C. Clarke's science fiction novels, he likes to point out how unnecessary it is. Of course, when you are on a space station or living underground on earth or some moon in our solar system, time zones would not make sense. Until then though, I think I can live with time zones and daylight savings time. :)

Jack