Dr. Oleg Popov, Head of Time and Frequency Measurements, is responsible for the national time of the State of Israel at the Ministry of Economy and Industry. In a special article, he explains about world time and local time in the State of Israel, and when and why daylight saving time began around the world.
What is local, national and world time?
The transition between winter time and summer time in Israel is regulated by the Time Determination Law of 1992, which was amended and entered into force in 2013.
By law, daylight saving time begins on the night between Thursday and Friday before the last Sunday in March, at 02:00, and ends on the last Sunday in October at 02:00. On the day of the transition to daylight saving time, the clocks are moved forward one hour (from 02:00 to 03:00), thus obtaining more hours of daylight during the day.
According to the Time Determination Law, in the State of Israel, time is determined at the National Physics Laboratory in the Ministry of Economy and Industry, using a system of four atomic clocks, which mark the national time as UTC(INPL) Israel Coordinated Universal Time. Universal Coordinated Universal Time is marked as UTC.
Every country has a national local time, according to which the country's residents live and everything in the country is done according to this time. Local time in each country is related to and defined by the country's geographical location on Earth, which is divided into 24 time zones.
The counting of time zones begins at the zero degree longitude line located in the small town of Greenwich near London. Universal Time UTC is defined by the Greenwich longitude line.
Why do we move the clocks forward at 2:00 AM?
This is to maintain synchronization of Israeli local time with UTC global time. Since our local time is two hours ahead of global time, when it is 2:00 AM in Israel - in Greenwich Mean Time and according to global time it will be 00:00 AM. All over the world, time changes are made at 00:00 AM according to UTC global time in order to remain synchronized with UTC global time.
Why and when did daylight saving time start?
In 1784, Benjamin Franklin, while serving as the United States ambassador to France, suggested that the French get up one hour earlier in the summer to save on candles. The French did not accept Franklin's idea.
In contrast, Germany was the first to adopt the idea of daylight saving time for the first time, in April 1916, due to the coal shortage that was felt during World War I. This idea of daylight saving time was introduced in Germany and in the territories it occupied in Europe.
Shortly after the Germans, Britain adopted daylight saving time in May 1916, for the same reasons of saving coal.
Most countries in the world have already abolished the change of time for summer and winter, including most countries in Asia, Africa, and South America. There are also elements in the US that are pressing to stop changing the clock in winter. In addition, the European Parliament voted in 2019 in favor of abolishing the seasonal transition to daylight saving time, so that each country in the Union is sovereign to decide whether to remain in its standard time zone all year round or to permanently switch to daylight saving time.
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