Although Singapore does not currently observe daylight saving time in the traditional sense due to its tropical location, a form of daylight saving time, using a 20-minute offset, was introduced on an annual basis by the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements in 1933. On 2 July 1920, a bill was intituled as Daylight Saving Ordinance, 1920. It is to introduce a 30-minutes offset or seven and a half hour in advance of Greenwich mean time. The bill was read for the first time on 5 July 1920 but was later abandoned. In 1932, Sir Arnold Percy Robinson raised the idea of 20-minute offset after an earlier attempt was abandoned in 1920 which was first proposed by Sir Laurence Guillemard for a 30-minute offset. On 26 September 1932, a bill was intituled as Daylight Saving Ordinance, 1932. The Ordinance was passed at a meeting of the Legislative Council held on 5 December 1932 and approved by Sir Cecil Clementi on 15 December 1932. Between 1934 and 1935, the Daylight Saving Ordinance, 1932 was extended throughout both years by Gazette Notifications. The 20-minute offset was formally adopted as standard time in Singapore in 1936, and in 1 September 1941 the offset was increased to 30 minutes, the same as the 1920 proposal.
Malaysian standardisation
In 1981, Malaysia decided to standardize the time across its territories to a uniform UTC+08:00. Singapore elected to follow suit, citing business and travel schedules. The change took effect on 1 January 1982, when Singapore moved half an hour forward, on 31 December 1981 at 11:30 pm, creating "Singapore Standard Time". SST is 8 hours ahead of UTC and is synchronized with Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei and Perth.
Timeline
Timekeeper
In the early days, Singapore used a timeball on Fort Canning and Mount Faber for sailors to check with their chronometers by the falling ball at exactly 1 p.m daily. When the second world war came to Singapore, the Public Works Department cut the masts down as the masts formed an "ideal" markers' for artillery. After the war, the timeball became redundant as most ships now had wireless to give them time signals. The Time & Frequency Laboratory of A*STAR's National Metrology Centre establishes, maintains and disseminates the national time scale of Singapore, which is the Coordinated Universal Time of Singapore, UTC and Singapore Standard Time. NMC maintains five caesium atomic clocks and one hydrogen maser atomic clock.
