[tz] [PATCH] * europe, NEWS: Give proper credit to George Vernon Hudson

Paul Eggert eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Sat Jul 19 08:22:47 UTC 2014


as the inventor of DST.
---
 NEWS   |  2 ++
 europe | 20 +++++++++++++++++---
 2 files changed, 19 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index babfdac..1845ee8 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -186,6 +186,8 @@ Unreleased, experimental changes
 
     There is new commentary about time in Poland in 1919.
 
+    Proper credit has been given to DST inventor George Vernon Hudson.
+
     Commentary about time in Metlakatla, AK and Resolute, NU has been
     improved, with a new source for the former.
 
diff --git a/europe b/europe
index 2ba3493..e87cc21 100644
--- a/europe
+++ b/europe
@@ -137,8 +137,22 @@
 # transition date for London, namely 1847-12-01.  We don't know as much
 # about Dublin, so we use 1880-08-02, the legal transition time.
 
-# From Paul Eggert (2003-09-27):
-# Summer Time was first seriously proposed by William Willett (1857-1915),
+# From Paul Eggert (2014-07-19):
+# The ancients had no need for daylight saving, as they kept time
+# informally or via hours whose length depended on the time of year.
+# Daylight saving time in its modern sense was invented by the
+# New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson (1867-1946),
+# whose day job as a postal clerk led him to value
+# after-hours daylight in which to pursue his research.
+# In 1895 he presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society
+# that proposed a two-hour daylight-saving shift.  See:
+# Hudson GV. On seasonal time-adjustment in countries south of lat. 30 deg.
+# Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute. 1895;28:734
+# http://rsnz.natlib.govt.nz/volume/rsnz_28/rsnz_28_00_006110.html
+# Although some interest was expressed in New Zealand, his proposal
+# did not find its way into law and eventually it was almost forgotton.
+#
+# In England, DST was independently reinvented by William Willett (1857-1915),
 # a London builder and member of the Royal Astronomical Society
 # who circulated a pamphlet "The Waste of Daylight" (1907)
 # that proposed advancing clocks 20 minutes on each of four Sundays in April,
@@ -151,7 +165,7 @@
 # A monument to Willett was unveiled on 1927-05-21, in an open space in
 # a 45-acre wood near Chislehurst, Kent that was purchased by popular
 # subscription and open to the public.  On the south face of the monolith,
-# designed by G. W. Miller, is the...William Willett Memorial Sundial,
+# designed by G. W. Miller, is the William Willett Memorial Sundial,
 # which is permanently set to Summer Time.
 
 # From Winston Churchill (1934-04-28):
-- 
1.9.1



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