If your digital watch automatically adjusts for daylight-savings, congress may be about to make it obsolete. According to this CNN story, lawmakers recently approved legislation that will extend daylight-savings by a total of two months:
Lawmakers crafting energy legislation approved an amendment Wednesday to extend daylight-saving time by two months, having it start on the first Sunday in March and end on the last Sunday in November.
The amendment was approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee that is putting together major parts of energy legislation likely to come up for a vote in the full House in the coming weeks.
Yes, more daylight might save us 10,000 barrels of oil a day, but what about all the watches that will no longer adjust themselves properly? Who is lobbying for them?
Legislation that could break your digital watch
Watches that will be affected are quartz watches which automatically reset themselves twice a year to compensate for daylight-savings. Fortunately, most if not all of these watches have a way to manually turn DST on and off, but it would be a bummer to have to remember to do that. Watches that won’t be affected are obviously your automatic and mechanical watches, your digital watches without an automatic daylight-savings function, and digital watches which are set remotely like atomic watches or MSN Direct watches.
The bad news is that your watch might become obsolete. The good news is that it’s a great excuse to buy a new one.
