738 Comments

Great mini lesson! Kind of reminds me of the Y2K panic that never materialized! Thanks Dr. HCR!

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Y2K was averted as a disaster by a lot of diligent computer engineers, programmers, analysts, and users that began way before popular awareness of the issue was a thing. It is because of that work, coordinated globally, that Y2K “never materialized”.

My personal role in Y2K response was as the shift supervisor for my local Sheriff’s Department, which had gone to “maximum staffing levels” beginning on 12/29/99. It was the quietest NYE I worked in 28 years in uniform.

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Hmmm. Not so sure. I was rural Italy. Italy, as a nation, was far behind most other countries and rural Italy deemed hopeless when it came to Y2K preps. I had run a Marathon on New Year's Eve 1999. Then I went down to mid-night service at a nearby Basilica in the valley.

The mass commenced sometime around 11:30 p.m.; rural Italy is not too anal about times. As the prune-faced muckety-muck from the Vatican spoke on-&-on in Italian, half the audience was dozing and the other half listening intently. Except for one of the faithless, a certain Yankee (i.e., me).

Yes, there I was cocking my head up and down, alternately looking at my watch and at the overhead light. When the magic minute arrived for the new year, the new decade, the new century, and the new millennium, all that happened was a flicker of that large over-head light.

After the service, I walked out of the basilica expecting the night to be impossibly black. The suspense built substantially. But, no, living room lights still dotted the adjacent hills and street lamps continued illumining the roads. The only item amiss was a railroad gate that had come down and still chimed away with no train in sight.

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I was riding a 200 mile - four day (fifty miles a day) endurance ride in Death Valley. The night sky was ablaze with star and we danced in the dust to an Elvis impersonator. What a night. And, yes, it was COLD! We had several bon fires going. Thans...your share brought up this long ago memory.

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Yeah, I think we all had our own anticipations and celebrations for the day, Penny.

EDIT: on the Marathon for Peace -- ironically titled in retrospect -- I lived down to G.K. Chesterton's epigram: " Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." 🤫

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(smile) You took us there, through time and space. Thanks!

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Well, Thank you, Beverly. You are giving me credit for your imagination. Well, on second thought, I lived in N.Y.C. long enough to know how to take credit where it is not due. 😉

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Good story Ned. My wife...girlfriend at the time, worked for a large hospital in Baltimore as the assistant to the head of IT. They had a huge budget to get things ready for Y2K. Since she was not a tech, she did not have to work that night. We had a formal dinner at my house with candlelight and danced at midnight. We had a beautiful crossover to the new century.

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Sounds great. The millennium happens only once in a thousand years. So do it right! 🥳

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The only really weird thing is that we all called it the "new" millennium and yet, in reality, it wasn't the new millennium at all. Any one who understands basic numbers knows that there never was a year zero, that the first AD millennium started in the year 1 and ended on Dec 31 in the year 1000, so the second millennium didn't actually end until a year after the "fateful" day of Dec 31 1999. Yep that whole year of 2000 was really the END of the previous millennium, not the start of a new one. That didn't happen until Jan 1, 2001 (as Arthur Clarke noted in his famous book 2001: A Space Odyssey. )

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Jon, you are right, and I think most people did know that, but people were worried that computers would get messed up because of the change from 1900s to 2000s. Things were often set up to have a 19 automatically come up for dates and the last 2 numbers put in. For most facilities, I understand making the change was not as hard as had been anticipated, but it did worry a lot of tech people, and writers who wanted some kind of massive problem that would bring down civilization or something. As so often happens, the anticipated change was less problematic than expected. On the other hand, some change really frightens people, like treating people who don't look like us as equals, worthy of our respect. That is a big one, but when one actually makes the change, life is so much brighter because the "enemies list" grows a whole lot shorter and the "potential friends list," a whole lot longer.

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While there was no year zero on any calendar, there was a zero point in time, from which the calendar keeps time.

Indeed there are numerous time zeros, depending on which calendar you are using. The Julian is perhaps the most commonly used, but there are also others from which to choose such as the Jewish calendar, as well as Aztec, Chinese, Ancient Greek and so on.

This is a picky point I freely admit.

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Can always count on you, Jon. 😊

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My husband & I went to a sit-down dinner for about 30 people, put on by a friend who is a terrific cook, and fairly well-to-do. So she hired a wonderful swing band, and we danced (one of my men friends is a terrific lead!) and ate, and watched fireworks. A wonderful evening.

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I just made my first trip to Italy this spring. I’d say urban Italy isn’t too concerned with exact time schedules either. We attended a Holy Thursday Sacred procession in Sorrento scheduled to begin at 8pm It actually began at 9:15, but no one seemed at all concerned or surprised.

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In Italy, time, like traffic lights, is simply a suggestion. Even ignorant Americans are tolerated when they make dinner reservations at the ridiculous time of 7:30 or 8:00.

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Our tour guide was surprised every morning when we were all in the lobby 10 minutes before the appointed time. (Admittedly, in a group of twenty even amongst Americans, that was unusual. We must have had a high degree of Germanic heritage in the group)

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Tunis has that load of history from Carthage, too; Tunisians are much like Italians, with one BIG difference. I always chuckled with the taxi drivers in Tunis. They would run through the traffic lights with abandon like denizens in Naples, Italy. Yet they drove at the speed of retirees from Naples, Florida. 🥳

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Funny visual, Ned.

We were in Rome, and I was looking for a shop that sold hand-made knives, which I wanted to buy for my adult sons. I couldn't find the shop, so hailed a taxi and asked the driver if he knew where to find the shop. He thought it was near the Pantheon, so off we went. On the way, he asked what kind of knife I wanted, and I was trying to describe the elusive object, when he reached under his dashboard and pulled out a lethal-looking stiletto - "like this?", he asked helpfully. I gave up trying to describe the knives that I sought, but asked if he kept the stiletto for protection, and was his job dangerous. He laughed and told me that since Rome is so dependent on tourists, the police take care to provide good protection. I never did find the knives I wanted, but anyone who visits Italy just can't be put off by small disappointments. Even the taxi drivers are engaging.

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That is what I love about Italy -- all that history and wearing it like a loose garment.

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I loved Italy

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I do, too. If I weren't over 80, I'd sell everything and move there. Since Giorgia Meloni, Mussolini's granddaughter, moderated her views and changed her political affiliation, Italy certainly has appeal, especially since Trump plans to burn this country to the ground.

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So did I, until I went to live there.

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Love your Y2K story Ned; Penny’s too. We simply climbed to the rooftop of our home in the Midwest and watched the stars as 2000 arrived (it was amazingly mild weather). Remembering our much younger curiosity w/out fear reminds me to consider the same approach for our next 4 years. When overwhelmed I’ll go outside to watch the stars.

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That sounds like the perfect prescription for my post-electoral oldster's blues, Maureen.

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Thanks for another great start of this Monday. The other is HRC's letter. On our way to our home in Rome tomorrow. What a fabulous description of my fellow Italians where when a bus comes we often say "un miracolo".

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Well that is a character-building tale . . . for me, *Purobi. Learning yet again to manage being pea-green with envy. 😉

EDIT: please forgive my mis-spelling your name, Purobi. 🤞

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Your story makes me smile, Ned.

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Mission accomplished. 😉

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Oh… Mr McDoodle, I thought you were in rural Italy in 1883. 😜👺🐗👧😪😝

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I dearly wish I could post the laughing Snoopy meme, here: "Always find a reason to smile. It may not add years to your life but surely will bring life to your years."

EDIT: good one, me-lad, Billy. 😊

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A challenge for this age

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No Snoopy surely is a challenge! 🖖

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Interesting how, in retrospect, these stories of non-events have their own dignity and charm! They are now memorable moments for being other than anticipated. Thank you for sharing this lovely anecdote.

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You are welcome, Laura!

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Great story, however, the new century and millennium didn't arrive until the year 2001. Just sayin' ...

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True-dat. Spent that in Times Square. Way over-rated.

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Apple's Macintosh computers were nonplussed with all the mental gymnastics performed with PC equipment. I know as I had mine ready to roll at our fire department. The turn of the century/millennium came and went without so much as a belch.

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And I ran a 5 K midnight race in Central Park. I know because I still have the tattered long sleeve jersey. I didn’t win, btw.

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I stand corrected. It was 2001. But the tee shirt is still tattered. I wonder why I didn’t run in 2000. It’s too late to go back.

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I just discovered this organization that turns nostalgic t-shirts into blankets! https://www.projectrepat.com/pages/our-story-hos

What's more comforting than covering yourself up with fond memories - AND having more drawer space too! For whatever it is worth to share (I'm considering having a Harris quilt made, myself).

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Ok I produced I think the only tee shirt celebrating the presidential debate in 1996 in Hartford between Clinton and Dole. I drove to the place where Clinton stayed and gave tee shirts at the front desk. But I never drove to a nearby two to give Dole shirts and I always felt guilty. But about 10 years ago I found Senator Dole’s email and messaged him my apologies. He wrote back and told me to send them to his museum in Kansas I believe. And I left him with my thoughts about as a great leader that we now find lacking. He thanked me and I always treasure that brief interaction.

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What a great find! Drawer space is a big problem.

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Wow never knew Apple had systems to dispatch fire equipment. I worked with a company with many jurisdictions but theirs were all on some flavor of Unix or Windows based servers.

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Ours were all Windows based.

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I used to love that little musical wave as the Windows logo came up on screen. Now even the window has gone. My screen is covered with icons, so I always leave a clear space where the window used to be.

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speak for yourself te he

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I was in London, working for the Finance Director of an extremely wealthy transport company connected all over the British Isles and a large part of the USA. We'd been preparing for weeks. Hardly dared to go to bed in case London melted down at midnight. And I was in Paris when the Euro became the currency. Knowing the French, the authorities had been preparing us all for a year, with instructions, and gimmicks (little bags of gold-clad chocolate euros, keyrings with a euro-converter gadget) to show us how great it was going to be, dual price-tickets on everything, and braced for commercial paralysis and protest marches in the streets. But no! At midnight, people were queuing at the ATMs, squealing with joy as they extracted their first euros. €€€ And as for time zones, my son used to call me from Australia at 2 am for a chat, having calculated forwards instead of back. (Or the other way, I'm not too good at math.)

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We still have several years to avert the next big computer time disaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

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Fascinating!

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Yuhh.., so much for our 64bit world. Only 14 years til 2038. It'll be here in "no time". But, the lead up to it?

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Oh no! Here we go again. Tr*** will fix it... he's a stable genius. Hahahahahagag

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Joyce - I hope he isn’t anywhere near the White House to even try.

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Interesting. I was totally unaware of this. On the other hand, I'm not so sure I'll be here - or working with computers - in 2038.

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Yeah. We fixed the last one.... someone else's turn. Hopefully for another exciting new year, full of doomsday preppers and all !!

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Lots of places to upgrade to 64 bit processors all based on the Unix time, definitely an issue for those using 24 bit processors now mainly in Big government.

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Morning, Ally! Not surprised to know you were among those at the ready to lead us through a smooth transition!

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Morning, Lynell!! That was a quiet night, thankfully.

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You must be up super early or on your own time zone Ally.

I never realized when or how this was all coordinated. A meteorologist, telegraphs, and jewelers. Amazing coordination.

Happy time zone day to all.

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It was actually early enough in my evening, and of a topic that I could read before bed!

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Yes but that didn't keep the big wigs at my famous hospital from freaking out to the point where all the heads of departments had a sleep over in cafeteria just in case of disaster.

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As the head of my hospital's Emergency Department, I was required to be present that night. When nothing happened, we were sent home at 2 am.

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Quietest NYE I ever worked...

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Y2K was the best and worst thing that ever happened to IT. It was, the best because it created an incredible amount of work for almost every IT department, software company and hardware company. It also brought hundreds of thousands of programmers and engineers to the United States from India, Russia, China, the Philippines and many others. My company grew from 2 of us to over 150 consultants during the 1990's and we made the decision in 1991 to avoid doing any Y2K work.

But companies were desperate for Y2K help and when your clients ask you to handle their Y2K modifications, we did. The reason we didn't want to make Y2K changes was that once these projects were completed we would have to find other work for them. We only did Y2K work for about a dozen companies and kept the size of the projects teams to a minimum. The modifications were similar mostly involving expanding the dates from mm/dd/yy to mm/dd/yyyy. The testing was critical as well, but all of our Y2K projects were completed by the end of 1997.

The life insurance industry had evolved from offering very simple products to include several complicated projects like Universal Life and Interest Sensitive Whole Life Products. And then came the Variable Life products where insureds could invest in various mutual funds.

Congress passed several major tax law changes to insure people were paying capital gains when they surrendered their policies. These were the projects our clients needed us to help them with and Y2K was a distraction form complying with them.

Congress and the various insurance departments were getting a lot of pushback from the insurance industry to not tinker with regulations that would require large modifications to their systems.

So by the late 1990's and into the early 2000's their were relatively few new regulations and also few new life insurance products compared to the 1980's.

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We had all finished data stored in databases and used the timestamp option for dates, far more accuracy than a simple date for computational needs. This was also the importation of foreign IT workers created a certain amount of chaos among people who felt their jobs post Y2K were in jeopardy because these workers were willing to take substandard pay to remain in the United States.

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All I remember is the Seinfeld episode....

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Just like standard time happened by many people, maybe even REPUBLICAN'TS, working together, and thats what needs to happen NOW in the current fuckup. We can't stand around to just see what happens. Everyone concerned should be working toward the future. I think Kamala said it best: WE WON'T GO BACK. Definitely not for this bunch of loonies.

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Thank you for your service Ally!

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Hear, here!

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I had a party across the street and arranged with the host that I would shut off the main breaker exactly at midnight. You talk about folks going silent.

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John, you are SO bad! LOL!

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Sounds like the Merry Pranksters at work . . . .

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When CNN showed the lights were still on for the New Year's celebration in Sydney, Australia, I knew we would be Okay.

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Yeah, it was kind o anti-climactic after that.

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My personal role was as one of those programmer analysts finding all the dates that would fail for a large international company here in Maryland in both mainframes and server based programs and databases. It was a fun task and we were ready long before the expected rollover..

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Most of the life insurance companies we worked for used one of a handful of life insurance administration systems. Most of them started using number of months since January, 1900 for internal date storage. But since birthdates on policies sometime produced 1900 all of the systems carried it as mmddyy, so that date was checked against the age at issue of the insured to determine the century. Otherwise, it was what you said and really wasn't that difficult to fix the systems.

A much larger project of expanding all of the financial values had recently been done in all of these systems because they were written when almost no one had a life insurance policy with a face amount greater than $9,999,999.99.

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There was a problem I kept quiet about (until Sep 25th this year), that took place 10 years after the first flight of the F-22 in 1997. It's more appropriate today in light of the start of railroad time zones.

See https://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/f22-squadron-shot-down-by-the-international-date-line-03087/

"...F-22A, back to Hickam…(click to view full) Aircraft software can be serious business. DID’s F-22A Raptor FOCUS Article mentioned recent flight software problems that delayed the aircraft’s first foreign deployment from Hickam AFB in Hawaii to Kadena AFB, Japan. What we didn’t mention at the time is how serious the problem was, and how dependent on computers modern aircraft – including military aircraft – have become. What follows are relevant excerpts from a CNN transcript on February 24, 2007 that covered a number of unrelated issues. We’ve cut that out, and left only the F-22 related section of the transcript… KC-10: Life saver…(click to view full) Maj. Gen. Don Sheppard (ret.): “…At the international date line, whoops, all systems dumped and when I say all systems, I mean all systems, their navigation, part of their communications, their fuel systems. They were — they could have been in real trouble. They were with their tankers. The tankers – they tried to reset their systems, couldn’t get them reset. The tankers brought them back to Hawaii. This could have been real serious. It certainly could have been real serious if the weather had been bad. It turned out OK. It was fixed..."

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That's fascinating, Jim. Thanks for this tidbit of info.

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I remember the fear well in our community of 2,000 people on the Pacific Coast-the classes available in local churches and neighborhood homes, the list of food we should store, the suggestion of mechanical devices to purchase to help make life bearable. The fear was real but also the leaders who rose up to help educate and calm the masses.

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I was one of those in my community. Computers and accounting programs had become the big thing in the previous several years, so much so that most younger people who did bookkeeping, etc., on computers had no idea how to do it on paper with columnar pads and doing a debit and credit for every item, and then how to create and balance a P&L or Balance Sheet. I had been doing manual bookkeeping since 1978, so I began helping people re what to buy, office supplies wise, and then how to use them. Many of them realized what a huge benefit computerized accounting programs really are, instead of having to carry around huge ledgers and binders for everything.

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I was a national bank examiner prior to and after Y2K. We started examining our banks in 1997 to see how they planned to deal with the time. Those who followed our guidance would be fine. Those who did not, faced a breakdown in IT systems. We encouraged those making progress to continue, and forced those who were not to pay attention. It worked. The banks made it safely through the millennium change thanks to a lot of hard work and clear expectations for ensuring their hard- and software were updated.

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Thank you for saying this. I, too, was in IT then and know the years of identitfying code needing to change way ahead of the day. It was a major concerted effort by hardware & software folks.

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“Kind of reminds me of the Y2K panic that never materialized!”

I had the same thought.

Now, if we could just get rid of this daylight saving time nonsense; not that it matters much to us retired folk.

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Yes! Please! I don't care which "time" they choose. It's always going to be dark when I take our dog (dog is our co-pilot) out for the first time or the last time.

Just pick a damn time and leave it alone.

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No, our country needs the switch. It’s one of the few universal non-partisan things we have to b!tch about now that the weather has been co-opted as a political talking point.

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Too right Bill! Here in Missouri I wake up in the dark all year 'round. At least when I travel to the UK in the summers I get some morning light (well it is quite early: 4:00-ish) to wake up to!

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I think we should get rid of daylight savings time. It does cause problems with our body’s time clock, so I’ve read.

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We need to stay on standard time. And if we allow states to choose their own, we could be going back to the mess for travel etc that we had before 1883, only hours ahead or behind all over the place.

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Don't look now...

Arizona keeps Mountain Standard all year. In fact it's called Arizona Time now!

Also, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands.

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I traveled to Bali several years back, and because they are located so close to the equator, their times, and the light, never change. Nor does the sunrise or sunset. The amount of daylight at 5am or 7pm, etc., is exactly the same all year round. Our tour guide had moved to California at one point, and it had taken him quite a long time to adjust to the changing daylight and night time throughout the year. He said time around the solstices was particularly difficult.

I also worked in Alaska for one summer, on a 16 week contract. During that entire time I never saw the moon or stars. There was no darkness, only a mild dimming of the sunlight in the 'morning' and evening. The college kids who worked at the same resort just stayed up and played football, basketball, etc., until they got tired, and some, I don't think, ever went to sleep. As I was driving home in my RV I finally got far enough south to actually have darkness, and when the stars came out I just sat there and cried. It had been so very long since I had seen them, and I didn't realize how very much I missed them and what a huge part of how I thought about myself and my identity they were.

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One time, all year long, please! The days get either longer or shorter according to the time of year, without us hoomans fiddling with the time.

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I agree, a person preference isn't as important as consistency in this. I think the lesson illustrates it's usual to resist change, but the benefit can outweigh the reluctance. It doesn't seem like too much of an adjustment to say, this is what 5 o'clock looks like in this part of the country.

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I LOVE daylight saving time, because the long summer evenings are even longer. It is of course a bit of a jolt when standard time hits us, and the change should happen earlier in the year (and consistently in spring and fall). But the alleged widespread disruption of people's personal clocks strikes me as exaggerated: does nobody ever stay up an hour past their bedtime on a Saturday night?

Whether you like the idea of year-round standard time or year-round daylight time depends a lot on which side of a time zone you live on - the long dark mornings for those on the western side can be a bummer on daylight time, in the winter.

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When I was working, it took me two to three weeks to adjust to the time change. Air and rail lines find it to be a twice-yearly hassle. I still say eave the time one way or the other, but leave it alone.

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Some of us wake spontaneously at 4:00 am and staying awake to close the chicken coop when those girls refuse to go to bed until full dark is a hardship when dark falls at 10 pm in the northern part of the US.

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I also prefer daylight saving time, mainly because I have a long commute to/from work. Driving to work as the sun comes up puts me in a hopeful mood for the day's work. Driving home with extra vigilance in the dark after a day's work is even more stressful. Around here, the argument for standard time is that parents don't want their precious little darlings waiting for the school bus in the dark. But that argument is bunk, since virtually all parents chauffeur their precious little darlings to school in the family minivan.

The time change does mess with my internal clock with wide-ranging effects. This is exacerbated by sharing my home with a dog who doesn't care about human time conventions. When it's meal time, it's meal time. When it's potty time, it's potty time.

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Quite right John Gregory! ...and THAT was how universal time evolved,... in an effort to get those local communities, say on the western side of current time zones which had their own time for noon, etc, to match where the sun was (or wasn't). Cost/benefit analyses over time have suggested the standardized time zones are worth the irritation of dark evenings or dark mornings. I, however, am one who would prefer we not keep changing it around by the season, but then I am of a relatively adaptable constitution and recognize that many others are not.

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Spain was on perpetual daylight savings time when I was growing up there in the 60’s. I loved it! When I came back to Massachusetts to go to college, and it started getting dark at 4:30pm, I got really depressed. Have hated standard time ever since!

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Didn’t it used to be in October and in March?

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Au contraire. Working outdoors as I do 7 days a week, I love daylight savings time and am supposedly retired . I can get a lot of work done in those long warm evenings that go on forever.

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I was curious about the local solar time differences between Maine and Florida at various times of the year so I used suncalc(dot)org to see that in Caribou Maine solar noon would be at 12:33:49 while solar noon in Tampa Florida is 13:31:36 (57 minutes 47 seconds later in Tampa, which is 14.44 degrees west). 15 degrees equals 60 minutes difference so it is no surprise that solar noon in Tampa is that much later since it is 0.56 degrees short of 1 hour, though they are both in the same times zone.

The bigger surprise to me was that Caribou Maine has 15 hrs 53 min and 34 sec of daylight at summer equinox, Tampa Florida has less at 13 hrs 55 min 35 sec.

As I was scanning replies I just saw Montana in passing and thought it would be someone from Montana so I looked up Kalispell Montana (near where a classmate had property on Flathead Lake). Kalispell is far enough north to get 16 hrs 5 min 40 sec, or about 12 minutes more than Caribou Maine by being about 1.3 degrees further north.

The takeaway for me is the bigger than expected difference in daylight hours with Kalispell getting slightly over 16 hrs during the summer peak and Tampa getting slightly less than 14 hrs. Then I could better imagine the complications of how far east or west you are in a time zone (with the warping of them added), and the impact in school children going to school in the dark (an increased risk for them), and elders like me with less than perfect night vision finding driving into brighter headlights in the darker hours problematic (especially with pedestrians that have no clue how hard they are to see if they wear camouflage that makes them even harder to see.

Without the quick glance at the name, mistaking it for a place, I wouldn't have seen quite as much difference.

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Day light savings time matters muchly to retired folks! I still don't feel what time it is and it "changed" 2 weeks ago. One time or another, no change please.

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Me too! Y2K wasn’t even a blip of a problem.

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We went to the special Y2K NYE Celebration on the Mall in DC that year. All our friends thought we were crazy. They were convinced that all kinds of bad things would happen. We froze our butts off, saw Bono (in the way off distance) sing and enjoyed some fireworks.

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We used it as an excuse to go visit friends in the west of Ireland, and see in the New Year on their farm out in the countryside, away from pretty much everything!

We knew nothing was going to happen, but it was bliss to relax and drink ourselves insensible, in front of roaring peat fires, feasting on locally raised food! :) It snowed, it was an idyllic New Year celebration.

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Seeing Bono must have been cool, but Sydney, Australia is 16 hours ahead of the US Eastern time zone. It all seems a little silly now doesn't it?

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Totally. We thought it was silly at the time. And I remember hearing the news in the morning that all was fine in Asia / Australia. I think (many) humans need something to freaking out about.

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But some people went nuts! One local guy, the husband of a prominent local physician, dug a fall-out shelter in his back yard, storehoused shelf stable foods, toilet paper, batteries, water, ammunition, gasoline, gas canisters and over a dozen generators. (He thought he could sell them at inflated prices afterwards.) I have often wondered how he felt afterward and what he did with all of it.

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My late, great, mother, not prone to catastrophizing, set aside 40 one plastic jugs of water in anticipation of Y2K. When she died 15 years, later, there they were, still carefully arranged in the pantry. I miss her.

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But, he's all set for another Trump administration.

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Same here. I remember Y2K very well. We had dinner (I still remember what we made) and watched London ring in the new year on TV. On 1/1/2000, we hiked up a mountain with plastic wine glasses and a small bottle of champagne.

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I was thinking this same thing.

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Another lesson in the importance of history. I’m sure study of 1883 could have averted much of the Y2K PANIC.

Heather uses this as another teaching moment that business accepted the time zones to avert the very Government Actions, which Abbe’s efforts actually were, but also illustrates how political or ideology can hamper progress.

We must be certain that the incoming Trump group understands this.

But

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Me too!

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There is an excellent article in Time from 2019 about why it was not a problem when the date came: https://time.com/5752129/y2k-bug-history/

And there is a much shorter and more fun description of the chaos (allegedly) caused by the 0K problem of going from counting down (B.C.) to counting up (A.D./C.E): https://commonplacebook.com/jokes/solving_the_y0k/

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Yes, indeed. That was what I thought of immediately. And again, after all the build up it clicked in without a whimper. I've always wondered what happened to all the wood cookstoves which were bought in anticipation.

And, yes, I realize a real modern world disaster was averted by a lot of prescient hard work.

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My thoughts exactly, magas existed then and now.

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I thought that too when I read:

“They were disappointed when, after all the buildup, the future arrived quietly.”

There was a Thoreau quote that came to mind as well reading.

"We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us"

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At my house, we had plenty of water and enough peanut butter to last us for years 😄

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That was my thought as well 👍🏻.

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That's what I was thinking.

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This is awesome. It’s also a reminder that there have always been those who fight any system change or adaptation of new scientific knowledge as ‘Against the laws of God.’

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Religion holding back Science, since the beginning of time!

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Not true. Science and religion were married for centuries. Only in recent times, science filed a divorce and is now sh*t-talking her ex.

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Think you have it backwards. Science evolves as we 'learn stuff'. Religion fights doggedly to maintain beliefs from earlier times.

Some of those beliefs are good for humanity (love thy neighbor, etc.) ... and some will prove (have proved) to be 'the death of us.' god help us ... and scientists too!🙂

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🎯🎯🎯

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I have to disagree with this one as well. The philosophy that underlies "modern" Western science hasn't changed since the 14-15th century. Buddhism nowadays simply isn't the same as it was 2000 years ago. They learnt a lot about the workings of the mind in this time, and almost no psychologist is willing to talk to a Buddhist to learn about it - the Buddhists are interested in psychology, however.

And how do you mean, some of those beliefs will be the "death of us"?? I'm really sorry, but I think "modern" western science will be the death of us, with its separated reductionist materialistic thinking. Religion didn't cause climate change, the depletion of resources and the impending biodiversity collapse - all these go on the count of science and technology!

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Good points but religion has it’s own crosses to bear.’

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Oh, definitely! And the religious institutions much more so than religion itself. Even the Buddhist institutions in Japan have war and bloodshed in their history...

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Mike, your comment is funny, but I agree with CRL that it's untrue, at least as regards Judeo-Christian religion. I can't think of any time when religion wasn't divorced from science (and reality). Even though we now know that extreme behaviors are caused by mental illness often resulting from chemical imbalances in the brain, there is still – in 2024! – a wide swath of religious folk who believe in demon possession. It's not surprising that these folk also believe Donald is going to make things better for them.

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Demon Donald.

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I have to disagree with you. For instance, Isaac Newton was a very fervent believer in God. René Descartes spent a lot of time trying the find out God's plan. A very interesting book about this theme is Cosmopolis by Prof. Stephen Toulmin.

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A couple points and then I'm done.

Surely you don't think that one or two isolated individuals over the past two millennia, or even a hundred such individuals, have demonstrated some kind of concordat between science and religion!

The patronage of a scientist by a wealthy cleric is a strictly financial arrangement and should not be interpreted as mutuality of thought.

It is possible for religious beliefs to overlap with scientific theory, but one does not prove nor disprove the other.

Many scientists are devout in their religions, but pursue their studies using scientific methods without allowing religious superstitions to govern or interfere with their scientific activities. Those who attempt to marry the two must do so by twisting logic into pretzels.

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A couple of points here then: it wasn't two isolated individuals. I know "science lovers" don't want to hear it, but science and the church were married for hundreds of years. The goal of science was to discover "God's plan". If you don't believe it, look it up. Once again: read the book by Prof. Toulmin. I'm a scientist myself, I've worked in pharmaceutical chemistry for 15 years, but I don't believe the fairy tale anymore that science is the "one and only truth" and that it's a linear success story - Thomas Kuhn disproves that story. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was right: the history of science is science itself.

Second point: the philosophy of reductionist materialism that is still the foundation of modern western science is no philosophy for/of life. It denies the soul and even the psyche, it being just a by-product of your biochemistry. It literally takes the soul out of everything and dehumanizes us: it reduces humans to just a bag of molecules controlled by their DNA. It did fit in well with the thinking of the Christian church: science also dictates that there is only one way of thinking that is true, in other words: thpu shalt worship only one God. Trouble is: if one would really _live_ the modern scientific philosophy, you would have to admit that the love you feel for your children is just an imbalance in your brain biochemistry, and if they get run over by a truck, you have to admit they're just a collection of molecules that found each other by accident and move on. This completely destroys all our emotions, morals and values. This philosophy, the way of thinking of modern science, is the biggest threat to humanity ever, because it also reduces Nature to just a heap of molecules. As the quantum physicist David Bohm so eloquently stated: "This fragmented thinking may well lead to our extinction." Well, here we are.

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😂😂😂

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With fear and damnation preached from the pulpits.

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But science is catching up! My two books on coincidence/miracles and after-death communication has garnered the attention of scientists. The Scientific and Medical Network, a group of esteemed scientists, invited me to join them as the only non-scientist/academic….

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Ain’t that the truth?!?

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Not sure those on the right should be reminded of this particular piece of history as it may cause a "time hoax!"

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Right? I wouldn’t put it past them to say we are going back to “God’s time” as a part of increasing government efficiency, when the opposite would be true. Another lie, more manufacturing of chaos to divide us even further, but their 50% would believe it and blame Dr. Fauci too!

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I’ve been noticing that a number of comments are being cut off early. I wonder what gives?

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I have that problem too. I can't read the last lines on my iPAD. Now that I am using my laptop I can see entire comment.

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it depends on the volume of comments hitting the system at the same time. The system tries to update itself frequently, and if there are too many new comments (and comments on comments), it can't handle the load (or some computers can't.) Yesterday's comments were unreadable for me for hours, till people settled down(!).

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Thank you for these explanations!

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John, like Martha, many thanks. On my iPhone, names seem to slip down as if it were sunset.🌅 I see only I/2 of them. But must add how ‘timely’ Heather’s post is as the week begins.

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Sir Stanford Fleming took standardized time zones international. He divided the world into 24 zones 15 degrees apart and set Greenwich England as zero. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/invention-of-standard-time-feature#:~:text=Sir%20Sandford%20Fleming%20was%20Canada's,NAC%2FC%2D14128).

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So that’s how Greenwich became zero — I never knew. Thanks!

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I have been dragged to Greenwich by train at 6:30 am. It’s fascinating, The museum there has

the barge for which Handel wrote the Water Music and a glorious portrait of Lord Nelson’s mistress. Greenwich was my husband’s absolute must do before we left England. As it turned out I was glad to be there.

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James - Whilst you’re there you must see Harrison’s timepieces and the truly amazing story behind them and how it contributed to the British Navy’s mastery of the seas. Also do read Dava Sobel’s Longitude.

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There was a good movie, too. Longitude

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Virginia Ioved Christopher Wren’s observatory in Greenwich. After watching A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS,I was thrilled to see a royal barge.

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I can trace my father's family back to the 1500's - because they were watermen on the Thames. Waterment had their own guild, and a seven year apprenticeship - mostly handed down father to son. Thanks to the apprenticeship records, it made it fairly easy to track the family back. That and the fact that they passed "Arthur" and "Edwin" down alternately to sons! We know that in the 1600's one of them was a waterman on the Royal Barge. It always makes me feel kind of weird that we are connected like that. The last one in the family died 1913 - he jumped in the Thames to save a kid that had fallen in, and got pneumonia. The Thames wasn't too healthy to swallow in those days. . .

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Wow.

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As I recall, The Thames wasn't too healthy to swallow in 1971 either.

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What a family history! I love it :)

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Amazing

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The Guilds in London (and other major UK cities) have amazing records that go back to the 12/1300's. We've also discovered that another branch of the family were "painters and stainers" who worked for Grinling Gibbons. I've attached a couple of links to give you more info. on that. The strangest thing to me is that these family members who had jobs that seem so exotic to me, were actually members of the very lowest classes - skilled, yes - but not well paid. If you research the areas where they lived, it was real squalor. Infant mortality was about 50%. Sometimes there were gaps between actual births of about ten years - which researchers today reckon was often the result of syphilis infection reducing sperm count. London was a mad old, bad old place!

https://painter-stainers.org/history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinling_Gibbons

https://watermenscompany.com/

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I've been to England several times but never to Greenwich. You've just given me two reasons to go there.

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there is a long brass line about 3 inches wide at the Royal Observatory - one can straddle it and have one half of one's body an hour later than the other. (Spoiler alert: it doesn't hurt!)

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Like crossing the international date line in the Pacific-tough to straddle, though.

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See the story of the SS Warrimoo, claimed to have crossed the International Date line at midnight on Dec 31, 1899 (actually did so a day earlier on Dec 30, 1899).

According to Wikipedia: "...However, it was later claimed that Warrimoo reached the intersection of the International Date Line and the Equator at midnight on 31 December 1899. This would have placed her bow in the Southern Hemisphere in summer on 1 January 1900, her stern in the Northern Hemisphere in winter on 31 December 1899. She would therefore have been simultaneously in two different seasons (winter and summer), in two different hemispheres, on two different days, in two different months, in two different years, in two different decades, in two different centuries.[7] (The "centuries" referred to by the writer would be the 1800s and the 1900s, rather than the customary 19th and 20th centuries.)..."

The end of the 19th century was Dec 31, 1900 at midnight becoming the 20th century at that point, a year and a day after they estimated they had straddled so many day, month, year, decade, 100 year, hemisphere, and season boundaries.

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Now that was funny! Of course, these days I'm easily amused.

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Works pretty well into you get out in the mid Pacific, and the International Dateline makes its zigs and zags. "What day is it again?"

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true, but unfortunately God didn't think to line up the various Pacific islands with a convenient space from pole to pole for the dateline to track. But more inconvenient to have part of a country/island in one day and the other part in the next, than just to have an hour's difference. So : zig-zag.

Probably one reason to have chosen Greenwich for the prime meridian was the relative emptiness of the other side of the globe for the rollover of dates.

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A number of states are divided by the time zones also, mostly in the eastern states.

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True. That is more due to politics than strict adherence to longitudinal divisions. Obviously, they can be worked around where they are inconvenient or impractical. I tend to look at where time zone changes correspond to state boundaries. Makes sense to me.

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Yeah--a British imperialist move if ever there was one. Note how few time zones exist in the eastern half of the globe . . . I personally love the places that have moved their time zones around by half-hour or three-quarter-hour increments . . . https://www.timeanddate.com/time/time-zones-interesting.html#:~:text=Venezuela%20changed%20its%20time%20zone,to%20UTC%20%2D4%3A00.

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I don't know if I should laugh or cry at your comment. Fleming was a Canadian. Greenwich was zero because of the observatory. If you look at a map of the time zones you will see that few if any follow a straight line as countries redefine them pragmatically.

LWNJs and RWNJs appear to have much in common

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Yes. A rousing shout out to Newfoundland, which is always a half-hour ahead (or behind) everyone else.

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Well, nobody else had done it, and as a global trading and imperial nation (amongst others), Britain needed certainty in its time measurements. And as Allen said, it was actually a Canadian (back then a member of the British Empire, but still from another country) who did it.

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In 1916, a 42 year old Henry Ellis Warren, changed time (keeping) in America and most of the world.

Warren invented the first self starting synchronous motor for clocks. Using the 60 cycle electric alternating current from Boston, his Ashland, MA small startup began electric clocks that were super accurate and reliable.

He built a master clock, using a pendulum clock and an electric clock that measured the difference in time between the two. This master clock he took to Boston Edison to show the generating company that there 60 cycles per second was varying from 58 to 61 hz.

He also had an earlier business making steam turbine and engine governorsnto regulate their speed.

He convinced all the different electric generation operators to use his master clocks. Across the land, 60hz was in sync and accurate. This 1895 EE MIT grad, which included the great Alfred P Sloan, introduced these firsts: alarm clock, 24 hour clock, lit clocks, digit clocks, electrochromed gold and silver clocks, the first major plastics, industrial design.

His brand was Telechron.

Time at a Distance

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Another nugget of history I never knew. Thank you!

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Thanks, Doug! I know Ashland well. They have preserved the history of Warren and his invention. The school team is called the Clockers 😁⏰

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Wow

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Very cool.

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Thank you for elaborating on Dr. Heather's post! fascinating.

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They used to make up missing cycles at night so that there were always the same cycles in a day though weren't any more precise than the tolerances at any given time. I noticed the difference during some days (from the atomic clocks we used to help acquire tracking signals on polar orbiting weather satellites).

At the college I worked at (20 years ago), I noticed that people tried to set the wall clocks to different times, only to see them changed the next day. It turned out they were receiving the NIST radio signals at night (when reception was much better). The consumer clocks seemed to gradually get better receivers to sync them better than just during the night periods of better reception.

While I was teaching the only late shift class at the Space Systems Command and Control School, the students got the brilliant idea to set the clock an hour ahead on a Thursday. Without realizing it, and being well ahead on the course material, I let them go at 5 PM actual time (my wife asking why I was home an hour early was my 1st clue).

On Friday, I never said a word but turned the clock back an hour during the last break. Never a word was said, as I pretended not to notice the expressions on their faces, turning away to keep from laughing, as they realized they should have tried the trick on Friday instead of Thursday. The modern clocks stay updated much more frequently if my little weather station display is any indication (it gets terribly inaccurate in a month or two with the NIST sync feature not selected).

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Sly and clever

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Wow! And I felt like I was the only time geek! Too bad that scene was cut from Back to the Future 😁

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My late husband was an avid clock collector, had 600 at one time. He would have loved this conversation…. I do for him..

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JD. Thank-you for sharing. I would have loved to discuss his and my collection. There are so many fascinating angles to clocks.

Did he collect both mechanical and electrical clocks?

Kind regards

Doug

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He loved American antique clocks, but had a few French ornate. I had to dispose of them when the Alzheimer’s took so much from him. Just mechanical, he loved to work on them, get them running. He also loved the wood and started out staining or repairing til he figured out that the original condition was best. We had plenty of marble and metal ones, which were a bitch to move. But he just was so excited with new (old) purchases. I was record keeper til it reached 600. I said maybe it was time to sell a few. His illness made it so.

BTW, the Canadian series “Murdoch Mysteries” set about turn of the century has so many antique clocks. We used to watch and be amazed at how many they showed. Thank you for your interest. Do you collect antiques?

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I have some mechanical clocks. The oldest is a circa 1830 Japy Frese we got in 1977 in the Berkshires, where we lived then.

I have some Chelsea, an 1850 Seth Thomas, both mechanical pendulum and weight banjo and Telrchron Election clocks.

I have some rare Telrchrons, including Henry Warren's persona Auxiliary l clock. It has a mechanical pendulum on a spring, that released its arm from the electromagnet when the power went off. It would run until the power came on again. I also have all of his science, engineering diary and logbooks of his inventive work. And other items.

I'm not doing much now. Space!!! I loved taking them apart for cleaning.

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Brings back memories. Daryl cleaned movements with carburetor cleaner and dried them in our oven, set at 200 degrees,

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There is a lot of enjoyment from working with our hands. Knitting, quilting, textiles for my wife.

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I love these nuggets of history. Thank you!

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Can I just say how much I adore Heather Cox Richardson??? Too late! I said it!!! Thank you for always being so wonderful!

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Not just you, Marji!

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This is so going to make it into my 8th grade American History classes this week! My thanks to HCR.

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Thanks again for that map, Peter Pappas!

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Fabulous, fascinating map, thanks!!

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What fun!

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Thanks! I needed that. A distraction and a fascinating and important bit of history.

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Yes, and a few of you are bringing up politics and religion without including humor. STOP IT. WE WERE ON A BREAK! 😉

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Hey all.. please please take a minute to add your senators, your US rep, and your local elected officials to your phone. Include Senate Majority Leader John Thune (202) 224-2321 and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (202) 225-2777

Then call them all the time to tell them what to do. You are the boss of them; never let them forget it. 🩵

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Good reminder, Erin!

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They will never acknowledge that, never

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A bit of trivia: I have cousins who owned a house in Michiana, MI. and the dividing line for the time zones between MI and IL ran through their house. Luckily, their kids were grown, so they didn't have to worry about different time zones for different schools, but things like which post office closed at which time or when, exactly, a movie was starting, could sometimes be confusing.

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WOW! Right through their house! That’s another fascinating story.

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Exactly!

Did the occupant children have different bed times?!?

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Depended where their bedrooms were no doubt!

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Once a county line ran through my House in NC. Who to pay taxes to??? From the bedroom or living room…

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Were they able to come to an amicable conclusion?

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Yes, paid to one the bedroom was in…

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Really interesting Heather - thanks for this. As an ancient historian (retired) I used to need to explain the keeping of years, calendar months, weeks, and the hour of the day to students in a Greek or Roman context. What did the ancient Romans do, for example, with no AD/BC or BCE/CE? They dated "from the foundation of the city" (ab urbe condita), so 10 BCE would have been 743 AUC, or they used the names of the consuls (e.g., in the consulship of Cn. Pompeius and M. Crassus, i.e., 70 BCE) that was kept on a list by the pontificales or chief priests. As for the month, it was lunar, so 28 days with inter-calendar days added to keep up with the solar year. As for hours, that's quite confusing - the day began at sunrise and the Romans referred to "the x hour of the day", so in June that would be quite early in the morning since the first hour of the day was the first one after sunrise, in December, conversely, quite late. In Greece the situation is even more complicated, and I have a busy day . . . .

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This is turning into the best post ever; thanks for your time in giving further details!

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I remember having to learn all that at school so I could follow our Latin set texts :-D

I can't remember the Greek system at all! Except that it varied according to the state. But for the hours, it was the same, no? - the Sun's revolution doesn't change that much within Greater Greece, or between Greece and Italy. I do remember the use of the clepsydra, although I never found out how widespread it was.

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The Greek system is really complicated, and was based on several systems, never unified. The Spartans would date based on the years of one of the two kings, e.g. in the third year of the reign of Archidamas (and to complicate things, there was more than one Archidamas); in Athens they had an office known as the Eponymous Archon whose sole function was to give his name for the year, so in the Archonship of Kallias (for example); more "universal" forms of dating we get from Thucydides, who used the priestess of Hera at Argos for dating, e.g., in the third year of the priestess of Hera, Chrysis, at Argos, or dating via Olympiads. Dating by Olympiads was complex indeed, since an Olympiad (a year when the great games in honor of Zeus at Olympia were held) came at a four year interval, so in the third year after the first Olympiad would put us at 773 BCE, although sometimes one might refer to winners of the four horse chariot race, so "inthe second year after Alcibiades won the chariot race at Olympia). To further complicate things, there were hundreds of city states that had their own calendars and dating systems, and among these we are best informed about the Attic - i.e. the Athenian - calendar. All of this might give you an idea as to why I'm a Latinist and Roman historian as opposed to Hellenist and Greek historian - Rome is a single entity and easy to track. Greek history and all those city states? You need a spread sheet!

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Ah, now I remember why I forgot it all. Those over-subtle Greeks, who only ever came together to fight the Persians, were fascinating but complicated, although I suppose that dating by Olympiads or priestesses or rulers was normal for them. I wonder if all this complexity was why they were so good at mathematics and abstract thinking? (or was it vice-versa?), whereas the Romans, those practical plodders, were good engineers.

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Wow! Thank You, Steve! Never was taught this in our Catholic school.

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That made my head hurt! Lol.

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Here's an 1865 poster that tried to sort out the time zone mess and a magazine cover satirizing the 1883 time reset. "Time Before Time Zones" https://forgottenfiles.substack.com/p/time-before-time-zones-1865

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I wonder how many Americans wouldn't be able to read the Roman numerals. No matter. AI is here to read and translate everything for us now /s

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Gorgeous map. Thanks for the link.

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You're welcome. If you like old maps - here's just my map posts https://forgottenfiles.substack.com/t/maps

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I love maps! Thank you, Peter!

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These are fantastic!! 🤩

Thank you for sharing.

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wow Peter, how did you get such good quality scans of all those maps!

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I intentionally choose high quality material. You can follow links in posts back to source. Occasionally, I use photo apps to increase resolution.

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.... And thank you yet again.

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This is great! I love the one about Dr. Seuss and his fight against fascism ! No wonder magites are trying to get rid of all his books. I'm going to find more and put them out on social media!

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Thanks Peter !

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I had to chuckle at the opening sentence: “It must be five o’clock somewhere.” A favorite expression of my parent’s era.

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Your newsletter tonight is a well appreciated tonic.

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Another chapter in American history that I didn’t know — and a treat for the imagination, picturing the moment such a change went into effect.

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Thank you Heather....for this wonderfully worded and fascinating story on the development of standardized time across the US....a beautiful break from the increasingly disheartening daily US political news. Just love your columns and enjoy each one from our home in Sheboygan WI. Linda and Rick Reiss

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Thanks for the lesson in history that is absent from most history texts. Since I read primarily from novels, I often get history lessons from historical novels. When I seek to verify facts as recorded in these novels, I always find that the best novelists who write historical novels research their novels by hard work and review of historical facts. They make history more entertaining.

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Absolutely right, Kim!

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