Nixon Switch [was: Linux "date" command ignores leap-seconds?]

Bob Jonkman bjonkman-w5ExpX8uLjYAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
Mon Jan 21 06:20:44 UTC 2013


I think that might have been double daylight saving time.  I remember
standing at the schoolbus stop at 8:00am in pitch blackness...  And I
see that Dennis Ritchie mentions that as the driver for abandoning DDST.

I wonder if Nixon earned any interest on the daylight he saved.

--Bob.


 On 13-01-20 02:35 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> | To: tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org
>
> | On 13-01-17 04:26 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> | > Of course POSIX says the Epock starts in
> | > Nixon's reign.  (Who remembers the Nixon Switch in UNIX?)
> | 
> | This has been intriguing me for days, and my Google-fu is inadequate to
> | the task. What was the Nixon Switch in UNIX?
>
> <http://tukg.org/doc/unix/PDP-11/Distributions/research/Dennis_v5/v5man.pdf>
>
> If you look in the 5th edition manual under ctime(III), you will see
>
> 	The external variable nixonflg if non-zero supersedes daylight
> 	and causes daylight time all year round.
>
> That's because Nixon changed Daylight Savings Time rules for 1974 and
> 1975 in response to the 1973 oil crisis.  I think that he made it
> all-year round.
>
> I no longer remember how one would set this external variable.
>
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.folklore.computers/jH6BAi5W1Vo/ZSszNv7NS98J>
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.folklore.computers/jH6BAi5W1Vo/Npotf09TXnAJ>
>
> It sounds as if the setting were compiled into the library.
> --
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