Background information about the book
What's the time over there, Soccerman?
One of the complications Henni and Leo faced while emailing to each other was the time difference and the changes of it due to daylight saving. When Henni was emailing Leo, it was August which meant that it was winter in Australia and summer in Germany for Leo. Henni was 8 hours ahead of Leo in Berlin during this time.Then - at the end of October, where it was fall in Berlin and spring in Melbourne, the time difference changed to 10 hours - due to the daylight saving time! Germany's daylight saving time ended and the clocks went one hour back, but in Australia daylight saving time was introduced and the clocks went one hour ahead. This added two hours to the 8 hours time difference and made it 10 hours (and in that night for a short time 9 hours)!
About daylight saving time
Daylight Saving Time (or Summer Time as it is called in many countries) is a way of getting more out of the summer days by advancing the clocks by one hour during the summer. In doing so, the sun will appear to rise one hour later in the morning when people are usually asleep anyway. The benefit of this is the one hour longer evenings when we’re awake.
DST could save energy (less artificial light is needed during the evening) and make the country more efficient in addition to the pleasing effect of lighter evenings.
To make DST work, the clocks have to be adjusted one hour ahead when DST begins (during spring), and adjusted back one hour to standard time every autumn. Australia and Germany are two of the many countries observing DST, but there are also many countries who do not.
Click on the images below for more information.
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| A section of the timelines used to keep track of the emails | Trying to figure out how daylight saving affected our timeline |
History – who started it all?
Benjamin Franklin suggested the method in 1784, but it wasn't until 1916, during the first World War, that several countries in Europe adopted DST.
Many countries change the dates during which they have Daylight Saving Time from year to year, to fit around particular events and conditions. For example, in the Year 2000, Daylight Saving Time began earlier than usual in NSW, because of the Sydney Olympic
(Adapted from http://www.timeanddate.com/time/aboutdst.html)
Getting the times right on the authors' part
When the manuscript was typeset and the pages were being proofread, the editor found that some of the days and times in the headings were incorrect. This led to the discovery that Heike had written the time when the email was started, and Elizabeth had written when the email was sent. Heike spent one long night listing the times for all the emails: the time each would have been written, and the time each one would have been sent. She had a big headache after that! In the end the headings tell the time an email was sent.
In one part of the story, Henni and Leo are emailing while the other is on-line, waiting. They had to work out how long it would take for an email to go from Australia to Germany. Elizabeth had her email ready. ‘Okay, Heike, I’m sending it NOW!’ she said on the phone, and she counted ‘one cat and dog, two cat and dog, three cat and dog ... twenty cat and dog.’ ‘I’ve got it,’ cried Heike. ‘It takes 20 seconds for your email to get to me.’
