TURNING BACK THE HANDS OF TIME ... ONE THOUSAND TIMES.

While the rest of us are gaining an hour" when Daylight Standard Time returns October 26, find out what Bob will be doing faced with 1,000 clocks at Hands of Time."

Savage, Maryland -- How many wrist watches, clocks, and devices will you have to change this October 26 to get in sync with Daylight Standard Time? Be sure to count every last one of those digital displays around home, office, and car! Or, you may be one of those content to simply do the math" until Daylight Saving Time rolls around again next spring.

Even with one thousand clocks populating Hands of Time Clocks & Collectibles" in Historic Savage Mill, near Laurel, Maryland, owner Bob Capone has the same luxury of choice as the rest of us. The new and antique grandfather clocks, wall clocks, mantle clocks, cuckoos, novelty, nautical, talking, chirping, and alarm clocks -- mechanical or electric -- are not all running all the time, or at least are not set to the real time.

If all the clocks were actually running, the cacophony of chiming and striking and various melodies on the quarter-hour would be unbearable," says Bob, quite a concession for this self-described over-the-top clock aficionado who admits to at one time having dozens of running clocks at home. The tick-tocking alone would be deafening, not to mention it would be impossible for customers to appreciate the qualities of any one piece."
Just enough running clocks are spaced throughout the store to infuse the right ambiance of sound.             

Capone was one of the earliest retailers taking the leap of faith to hang a shingle in Historic Savage Mill when the 1820s textile mill was restored as a marketplace for specialty shops, antiques, and artisans. Spending 17 of his 25 years in business at the Mill, Bob is also one of its best success stories. His clocks and collectibles and gallery of fine art have flourished, migrating and sprawling in the Mill and now occupy 14,000 square feet of retail and warehouse space. Hands of Time also houses a preventive maintenance and repair service center offering restoration of vintage clocks.

But, you know, if Bob had to turn back time on every clock in the place, he has it covered. Its as easy" as stopping all one thousand clocks for an hour and re-starting them.

Backgrounder

Standard time in the U.S.

Standard time in time zones was instituted in the U.S. and Canada by the railroads on 18 November 1883. Before then, time of day was a local matter, and most cities and towns used some form of local solar time, maintained by some well-known clock (for example, on a church steeple or in a jeweler's window). The new standard time system was not immediately embraced by all, however.

The first man in the United States to sense the growing need for time standardization was an amateur astronomer, William Lambert, who as early as 1809 presented to Congress a recommendation for the establishment of time meridians in this country. This was not passed. Nor was the initial suggestion of Charles Dowd of Saratoga Springs, N. Y., in 1870. Dowd revised his proposal in 1872 and the revised proposal was adopted virtually unchanged by the railways of the USA and Canada eleven years later.

Detroit kept local time until 1900 when the City Council decreed that clocks should be put back twenty-eight minutes to Central Standard Time. Half the city obeyed, half refused. After considerable debate, the decision was rescinded and the city reverted to Sun time. A derisive offer to erect a sundial in front of the city hall was referred to the Committee on Sewers. Then, in 1905, Central time was adopted by city vote.          

It remained for a Canadian civil and railway engineer, Sandford Fleming, to instigate the initial efforts which led to the adoption of the present time meridians in both Canada and the United States. Time zones were first used by the railroads in 1883 to standardize their schedules. Canada's Sir Sandford Fleming (posing at left, at the driving the last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Sandford Fleming has the stovepipe hat to the left of the man with the hammer) also played a key role in the development of a worldwide system of keeping time.

Trains had made obsolete the old system where major cities and regions set clocks according to local astronomical conditions. Fleming advocated the adoption of a standard or mean time and hourly variations from that according to established time zones. He was instrumental in convening an International Prime Meridian Conference in Washington in 1884 at which the system of international standard time -- still in use today -- was adopted.

Although the large railway systems in United States and Canada adopted standard time at noon on 18 November, 1883, it was sometimes many years before such time was actually used by the people themselves.

However, use of standard time gradually increased because of its obvious practical advantages for communication and travel. Standard time in time zones was established in U.S. law with the Standard Time Act of 1918 enacted on March 19. Congress adopted standard time zones based on those set up by the railroads, and gave the responsibility to make any changes in the time zones to the Interstate Commerce Commission, the only federal transportation regulatory agency at the time. When Congress created the Department of Transportation in 1966, it transferred the responsibility for the time laws to the new department.

Time zone boundaries have changed greatly since their original introduction and changes still occasionally occur. The Department of Transportation conducts rulemakings to consider requests for changes. Generally, time zone boundaries have tended to shift westward. Places on the eastern edge of a time zone can effectively move sunset an hour later (by the clock) by shifting to the time zone immediately to their east. If they do so, the boundary of that zone is locally shifted to the west; the accumulation of such changes results in the long-term westward trend. The process is not inexorable, however, since the late sunrises experienced by such places during the winter may be regarded as too undesirable. Furthermore, under the law, the principal standard for deciding on a time zone change is the "convenience of commerce." Proposed time zone changes have been both approved and rejected based on this criterion, although most such proposals have been accepted.

Source: www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving.
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