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HISTORY149 - Daylight Savings Time

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President Trump’s recent attempts to eliminate daylight savings time have resulted in Congressional action to implement his goal, although final resolution of this issue is far from determined.  After taking a quick look at the proposal, I discovered that there is a long, turbulent history on this topic - little known to me, and others I suspect.   So, this blog will cover the history of daylight savings time. After a short introduction, I will discuss how ancient civilizations addressed the subject; early efforts to provide daylight savings time (DST); formal actions to adopt DST in the two world wars and the 1973 energy crisis; the turmoil between these historical periods; the special cases of Arizona, Hawaii, and U.S. territories; and finally, current efforts to change DST. As usual, I will list my principal sources at the end.   Introduction Daylight saving time (DST) is the practice of advancing clocks to make better use of the longer daylight availa...
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HISTORY148 - Clothes Fasteners

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As usual, the idea for this blog came out of talking with Pat, who was telling me about her grandmother who ran a dress-making business in Brooklyn, New York in the early 1900s.  That discussion soon moved into the subject of zippers, the new clothes fastener of Pat’s grandmother’s time.  From there, we talked about all the different clothes fasteners we could think of, not knowing when they were invented, nor their development history, or popularity today.  So, I began thinking that I would research and write about the history of clothes fasteners, such as pins, buttons, snap fasteners, suspenders and belts, zippers, and more.  I was well down the road in my thinking when I realized that I needed to start with the history of stitching (sewing) because many historical and modern fastening techniques rely heavily on specialized stitching.    After an introduction, in which I will say more about the strong relationship between stitching and clothes fas...
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