Hi there,
I managed to find verification online for some of the countries, and
for the rest I used the AstroDienst database, as used by astologers.
UK - YES
========
The UK did, it was on Summer Time all-year-round for a few years:
"The experiment began on 27th October 1968 (time unspecified;
probably, following existing law on interpretation of statutes, at the
start of the day according to the time previously in force, which was
British Summer Time, one hour in advance of GMT; though a comment of
Lord Stonham on 23 November 1967 (Lords Hansard volume 286 column
1188) suggests GMT, this point of the wording does not seem to have
been considered in any of the Parliamentary debates on the Bill),
effectively continuing Summer Time throughout the year, and ended at
2am Greenwich mean time on 31st October 1971"
http://www.npl.co.uk/time/summer_time_archive.html
FRANCE - NO
===========
"Spring and Fall time change was reestablished in France in 1976. Of
British origin, the idea of putting the official time forward one hour
during the summer was instituted in France for the first time in 1916.
Eliminated after the Second World War, it was then reinstated three
years after the first oil crisis in 1973."
Embassy of France in the US - Daylight saving time
http://www.info-france-usa.org/atoz/daylight.asp
GERMANY - NO
============
"Since 1950 no DST"
DST and midsummer DST in Germany until 1979
Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB)
http://www.ptb.de/en/org/4/44/441/salt_e.htm
NETHERLANDS - NO
================
A machine translation of a Dutch site tells us the Netherlands didn't
have DST in 1970:
"Beside it finds one tabellarische surveys of the legal fixed summer
time periods in the Netherlands of 1916 until 1945 and of 1977 until
2006. With help of the summer time calculator can the beginning and
the end of the summer time period according to the summer time rule of
the European Union for each arbitrary year from 1981 had to become."
http://www.phys.uu.nl/~vgent/wettijd/wettijd.htm
ITALY - YES
===========
"Italy was the first country that introduced DST in 1966. The periods
until 1979 were as followed...."
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~dik/english/public_transport/TEE/timezone.html
The Rest via AstroDienst
========================
AstroDienst have an extremely good geographical database. Because they
use it for astrology, they have all the DST dates programmed in. They
say:
"Usually, it is not necessary and not recommended to select the time
zone manually, because this computer program knows which time zones
apply to which places for what times, and has complete information
about daylight savings time.
In some very rare cases a user may have better information about time
zones and daylight savings time than the database used here. For
example, there are areas of doubt for some years in Vietnam, and for
many parts of the former Soviet Union."
http://www.astro.com/cgi/h.cgi?f=hade&h=ha3&lang=e
For the remaining countries I entered a location, with a date of Sep
10, 1970. The results indicate whether DST was operating or not.
Switzerland - no
Cyprus - no
Turkey - yes
Egypt - yes
Israel - no
Jordan - no
Lebanon - no
Syria - yes
Iraq - no
I checked the answers I found from web pages and the AstroDienst
database agrees with them.
To try it yourself go here:
http://www.astro.com/atlas
Search strategy: the country name combined with "daylight saving"
Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga |
