daylight savingIn 1867, a man named Geroge Hudson was born in London on Easter Sunday.

You may not know his name, or indeed anything about him, but I promise you that you either loath or love him.

Mr. Hudson was an etymologist and was responsible for the largest collection of bugs known to have been assembled in New Zealand.

But whether you are fond, horrified, or indifferent to insects, you will still be either made happy, or saddened by Mr. Hudson's existence.

George was a shift worker, and his collecting of bugs took place, it seems, after work was done. Lamenting the lack of daylight when he was through with his daily toil, he proposed the idea of changing the time by two hours during the seasons of longer available light.

That's right, our George Hudson was the original proposer of the concept of Daylight Saving Time.

Now those of you who hate the concept will be asking why anyone took him seriously. And the answer lies in the fact that in the late 1800's and even well into the twentieth century, most societies were agrarian societies. And agriculture, back then, relied mostly on outdoor endeavours. The idea took off in the areas where daylight waxed and waned by significant yet reasonable amounts. Near the equator the difference in daylight is minimal so shifting time has no positive effect, and closer to the poles the differences in day length are so extreme that time changes have little effect. Daylight Saving Time at the North Pole would be of use for less than a month.

But why, you might ask, should we continue to use daylight saving schemes? For one thing, it could be argued that we are still and always will be an agrarian society, simply because we will never stop needing food, and like it or not, even fast food originates in agriculture.

But additionally, the original idea of having daylight hours in which to pursue ones life's interests after work is still a reasonable desire.

It is true that there are people who have trouble adjusting to the time changes, and there have been conflicting stories suggesting that the results of these difficulties can be seen in production figures and accident reports, but some see this as a challenge to be addressed in a system worth using.

From where I sit, I think we're coming to a point where it won't be long before our clocks will be managed by connected devices anyway, and when that happens, every clock in our homes will be adjusted by the powers that be.

Now I'm not suggesting that the time change would be out of our control at that time, but I am pondering the possibility that, at some point in the not too distant future, the change will not take place suddenly, and not just once per season, but gradually and spread out over a couple of months so that none of us even realize that the time is changing.

Well, none of us except maybe the people still working out in the fields for a living who can tell the time, or what it used to be, by the position of the sun.

In the mean time ... whether you are pro or con about Daylight Saving Time, the reality of it is that on the 4th of November, Daylight Saving Time ends for this year and we return to Standard Time for the remainder of the year.