Time change instituted in 1918 posed challenges for some in Sangamon County
What now is known as Daylight Saving Time was first instituted on Easter Sunday, March 31, 1918, as a way to save fuel to support U.S. soldiers in World War I.
In Sangamon County, the main inconvenience was to churches, most of which adjusted their Easter services to conform to the new “clock time” (as opposed to the old “sun time”) and railroads, whose scheduled trains lost an hour to the change.
Also challenged by the time change, however, was Western Union, the telegraph company, which synchronized thousands of battery-operated “self-winding clocks” around the U.S., including many in Springfield. Company workers had to manually advance the time on each of those clocks.
The Illinois State Journal took note:
“The large clock at the city hall and all street clocks will receive attention by their caretakers so they will not carry deception to the public. There are almost two hundred clocks in the city controlled by Western Union wires. Employees of the company set some of these ahead last night and were aided by patrons in many instances. …
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“Probably only one of the employees of the city found inconvenience in observing the time advance. That was Patrolman Botzke of the night shift, who found that it was impossible to be in two places at once at 2 o’clock this morning. He is supposed to ‘pull’ a box every half hour, and when 2 a.m. came he turned the hands of his watch to 3 a.m. He was supposed to be two blocks from the place at 2:30 a.m. to pull a box. … By reporting to the station operator, he was released from his plight when the records were made to show a one-hour lapse of time.”
If anything, more area residents were confused when the U.S. reverted to standard time on the last Sunday of October. Among them were the people who were supposed to adjust two of the city’s most prominent clocks, the Journal reported.
“‘My goodness! Is it that late?’ pedestrians and motorists would remark when they looked at the clock over Dodd’s drug store. And someone would reply:
“‘No, they just forgot to set the clock back.’
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“The city hall clock, deprived of the setting back process, kept marking time an hour ahead yesterday until late in the afternoon, and when it received attention, and was supposed to be fixed for standard time, it was one stroke short in striking the hours.”
The law instituting Daylight Saving Time was repealed following World War I. DST was reinstituted during World War II, but again only temporarily. Only since passage of the Uniform Time Act in 1966 has most of the U.S. adopted the Daylight Saving Time calendar.
Originally published on SangamonLink.org, online encyclopedia of the Sangamon County Historical Society.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Time change instituted in 1918 created challenges in Sangamon County
