Daylight Saving Time

One must surely question the logic of Jim Orr’s plaint against daylight-saving time (Letters, May 12) when he says, “My grass is brown enough already--it doesn’t need another hour of daylight each day. Let’s turn the clock back to the way God intended--standard time.”

Can he really explain how, in fact, there might be more or less actual daylight as we move back and forth between daylight and standard times? Rubbish. The phenomenon of variation in amounts of daylight changes with the seasons, according to the physical laws of the universe.

In Lowell Ponte’s earlier article (Opinion, April 27), “Daylight: the Time to Play Politics,” his historical review of how time-setting became increasingly more standardized around the world contained one serious omission. He noted the effect of the needs of railroading, as it spread over the expanses of the United States, to have greater uniformity for scheduling purposes. It was not railroading that established the world’s time zones. It was shipping.

The British being principal seafarers, with worldwide economic and political interests, it was no accident that Greenwich, England, site of their Naval Observatory, became the Prime Meridian of Longitude (0), base line for international navigational calculation of any east-west distance and for setting general areas of time zones.

ALAN W. JOHNSON

Palm Desert