Very interesting stuff! My grandparents used to talk about what they called "War Time" back in 1942-1945. "War Time" was essentially two hours ahead of (or later than) standard time, and was expressed, for example, as PWT (Pacific War Time), EWT (Eastern War Time), etc. The idea behind this was to maximize daylight -- and hence, productive -- hours for the war effort manufacturers, who often ran only one shift due to the shortage of workers in many of the more rural-dominated areas. It obviously had less impact for those companies who could run two or even three shifts, but it was never seen as detrimental vis-à-vis their war efforts, so it was kept until war's end.
War Time's other big advantage was that the two English-speaking allied capitals, Washington D.C. and London, were only five hours "apart" instead of the usual seven. Of course, this made the Soviet more suspicious of their allies, but paranoia was just one more cost of doing business with the USSR.
I never used to think too much about all this until years later, when I was working my way through a local "antique mall" and came across an ad in a period magazine for Tommy Dorsey's radio program, and the airtimes were listed as "8 PM EWT, 7 PM CWT & MWT, and 8 PM (recorded "delay" version) PWT." It was a pretty cool confirmation of all those stories the old folks used to tell. Hard to believe all of that is more than 70 years ago...
Thanks for the excellent post, Sam.
