The History of Daylight Saving Time in the US

Posted by Miss Cellania in Everything Else on October 31, 2009 at 10:59 pm

Daylight Saving Time ends in most of the United States a 2AM on Sunday, November 1st (Hawaii and Arizona have been on standard time all summer). We remember which way to set our clocks by thinking “spring forward, fall back.” It makes you wonder how we ever got our clocks coordinated in the first place. Believe it or not, standard time and time zones were the railroad industry’s idea.

“In the early 19th century … localities set their own time,” said Bill Mosley, a public affairs officer at the U.S. Department of Transportation.

“It was kind of a crazy quilt of time, time zones, and time usage. When the railroads came in, that necessitated more standardization of time so that railroad schedules could be published.”

In 1883 the U.S. railroad industry established official time zones with a set standard time within each zone. Congress eventually came on board, signing the railroad time zone system into law in 1918.

The 1918 law assigned the Interstate Commerce Commission to oversee the time zones, and legislated Daylight Saving Time. Later, the decision whether to observe DST was left up to the states. Link

 
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Tattooed Librarians

Posted by Miss Cellania in Tattoo, Etc. on August 3, 2009 at 9:30 am

The Texas Library Association is selling a 2010 calendar called “The Tattooed Ladies of TLA.” Twenty-one librarians show off their tats over 18 months. The calendar is a fundraiser to assist libraries that are still recovering from damage caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

“It was just a fun thing to do,” said Gretchen Hoffmann, 42, who turned up the heat as Miss August 2010 by posing on a row boat, a purple boa strategically draped to highlight the starfish tattoo on her upper back. “I like the idea that the calendars are stereotype-busters. You don’t usually see [librarians] as tattooed and sexy. We’re not the little old ladies who walk around with buns.”

Link to story. Link to website. -via Metafilter

 
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Calendar for Pyromaniacs

Posted by Alex in Arts & Crafts on July 18, 2009 at 9:59 pm

Ukrainian artist Yurko Gutsulyak has created what is probably the perfect calendar for pyromaniacs: the "days" made of individual matches that you can tear off and set alight.

Link – via Typography Served

 
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The Axe Calendar

Posted by Alex in Advertising, Pictures on June 1, 2009 at 7:06 am

Sure it’s a little bit sexist, but at least it’s creative! When Gee Seoul ad agency created this giant "calendar" ad for male deodorant Axe on the side of a female dorm. You get the message, I’m sure.

Larger pic at directdaily: Link

 
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Neato Calendar Page

Posted by Miss Cellania in Everything Else on February 8, 2009 at 8:25 am


One of my oldest online friends sent me a note:

For Christmas I received a desk calendar “365 Wacky Web Sites.” One of the pages, Feb 2, 2009 should be of interest to you.

This was a complete surprise to me, and even to Alex! The post referred to is Top 15 Amazingly Fat Cats from 2006. Link -Thanks, Mike Ashley!

 
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Shred the Day

Posted by Queuebot in Arts & Crafts, Gadget, Home & Garden on January 24, 2009 at 2:33 pm

Susanna Hertrich created this prototype Chrono-Shredder as part of a student design project.

It represents the passing of time by shredding the days of the year– printed on a paper roll– at a slow constant rate.  To shred one day takes 24 hours.  There is no ‘off’-button.  As the seconds pass by, the tattered remains of the past pile up under the device.

If you’re interested in manufacturing the Chrono-Shredder, get in touch with Hertrich via her website.

Link – via ryanyeah

 
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January Used to Be #11

Posted by Queuebot in Everything Else on January 13, 2009 at 1:25 pm

The month of January, named for the two-headed Roman god Janus, originally appeared towards the end of the calendar year, along with the equally dark and boing February, the last month of the year.

Then power brokers in Rome decided it would be more politically advantageous to inaugurate their new consuls in January, two months before the country typically went off to wage war in March, named for the Mars, the god of war.  The rest is history.

Link

 
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Living Calendar by Maksim Biriukov: Calendar/Clock Combo

Posted by Alex in Gadget on January 7, 2009 at 2:33 pm

What do you get if you combine a year’s calendar with a clock? Behold the Living Calendar by Maksim Biriukov. It displays the time, day (all 365), as well as public holidays in the year, all at once. The long hand points to the day and the short hand points to the present week and hour.

Link | Original website [in Russian]

 
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Top 10 Techno-calendars for 2009

Posted by Miss Cellania in Gadget on January 5, 2009 at 11:22 am


Do you have a calendar for 2009 yet? There are as many calendar designs as there are days in a year, and DVICE has selected ten of the strangest. I really like this bubble wrap calendar that invites to you pop off each day! Link -via the Presurfer

 
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The 12-cent Perpetual Calendar

Posted by Miss Cellania in Arts & Crafts on December 31, 2008 at 11:28 am


You don’t need a new calendar for the new year, if you’ve got 12 cents and an understanding of binary numbers! Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories posted instructions for making your own perpetual calendar.

It’s Wednesday, the fourth day of the week. The binary number for 4 is 100. We use “heads” for 1 and “tails” for 0. So the left hand column has (top to bottom) heads-tails-tails = 100 binary = 4th day of week = Wednesday. (If you don’t already speak binary, no biggie. Start here or here and join us in a minute.)

It’s December, month 12, and 12 in binary is 1100, so the middle column is heads-heads-tails-tails.

Finally, the last column is all heads, since it’s December 31, and 31 decimal = 11111 binary.

Got that? Me neither. Link

 
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Leap Second

Posted by Miss Cellania in Science & Tech on December 12, 2008 at 11:55 am

December 31st will be a long day this year. One second longer, to be exact. The earth’s trip around the sun doesn’t exactly correspond to our calendar, as it takes 365.2422 days. That’s why we add a day for leap year every four years, but it still doesn’t come out even, so every once in a while, another second is added to the last day of the year.

The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service is the organization that monitors the difference in the two timescales and calls for leap seconds to be inserted or removed when necessary. Since 1972, leap seconds have been added at intervals varying from six months to seven years — the most recent was inserted on Dec. 31, 2005.

Link -via Metafilter

(image credit: Flickr user slack12)

 
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