Happy Leap Day 2020! Google doodle celebrates Earth's extra day, but why?

Dec 11, 2019
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What I want to know is why do we keep setting the clock an hour ahead in the spring and an hour behind in the fall. I can understand the leap year but in this day in age there is no need to be turning the clocks forward and ahead. Unless somebody can give a good reason what the point is for that?
 
Mar 2, 2020
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This article contains two misstatements.

The actual length of a solar year is 365.24+ days rather than 365.25, or about 11 minutes less. That tiny difference is critical to the Gregorian algorithm which the author also muddles with the statement that the calendar makes "... century years that were divisible by 400 exempt (such as the year 2000)".

That's reversed: end-of-century years in the Gregorian calendar are exempt from the every-4-years rule when they're NOT divisible by 400. Thus 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap years but 2000 was, and our grandchildren will similarly not have a leap year in 2100.

The divisible-by-400 rule adjusts for those little 11-minute snippets that accumulate over the centuries. The adjustment's still not perfect, but close enough that the current calendar won't get out of sync with the solar year for many millennia to come.

As an IT designer who was heavily involved in my then-employer's Y2K preparations, I encountered all sorts of misunderstandings of this end-of-century subtlety, up to and including a major industry publication with a front-page story on how 2000 would only have 365 days. (And it was an actuarial firm so yes, we really did have to worry about the year 2100 too :D )
 
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Mar 3, 2020
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What I want to know is why do we keep setting the clock an hour ahead in the spring and an hour behind in the fall. I can understand the leap year but in this day in age there is no need to be turning the clocks forward and ahead. Unless somebody can give a good reason what the point is for that?
Money. OK, it was originally used to save electricity back in Germany prior to WWII. However, when we pushed the fall back date to the first weekend in October it was due to money - that extra hour gave candy manufacturers that extra hour to hand out candy on Halloween.

Personally, I would like to keep it to standard time through there is a push to make it permanently daylight savings.
 
Mar 2, 2020
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Money. OK, it was originally used to save electricity back in Germany prior to WWII. However, when we pushed the fall back date to the first weekend in October it was due to money - that extra hour gave candy manufacturers that extra hour to hand out candy on Halloween.

Personally, I would like to keep it to standard time through there is a push to make it permanently daylight savings.
Germany instituted DST ("Sommerzeit", or summer time) in 1916 during WWI to save coal rather than just electricity. They were the first to adopt it nationwide, but cities and regions in other parts of the world had implemented it as early as 1908. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time
 
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Dec 11, 2019
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Money. OK, it was originally used to save electricity back in Germany prior to WWII. However, when we pushed the fall back date to the first weekend in October it was due to money - that extra hour gave candy manufacturers that extra hour to hand out candy on Halloween.

Personally, I would like to keep it to standard time through there is a push to make it permanently daylight savings.

Thanks. I knew it had to involve candy and Halloween somehow.:DThose candy manufactures must have had a big candy lobby to push for this.lol!

I agree and I would be happy if we would stop changing the time every year.
 

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