How Daylight Saving Time Got Started

Courtesy of informnorth - the regions leading magazine for enterprise and change

The idea behind Daylight Saving Time is pretty simple. Setting clocks one hour ahead during the summer months, when days are longer, adds one hour of daylight to the end of the day, when more people are awake. And that reduces the amount of energy needed to power lights and appliances. Easy, right? Historically, some have said it's crazy though.

Big Ben, Meet Will Willett

Maximizing the daylight hours was first suggested by none other than Benjamin Franklin, who wrote about conserving candles in a whimsical 1784 letter to the editor of the Journal de Paris. Big Ben didn't hit on any clock tricks because his proposal, to be taken as seriously, involved taxing window shutters, rationing candles, restricting nighttime traffic, and ringing every church bell - and firing cannons in every street - at dawn to encourage early risers.

The clock trick we know today came largely from one William Willett, a London builder. The plan he put forth in 1907, in a pamphlet titled "Waste of Daylight," called for everyone to set their clocks forward 20 minutes on each Sunday in April, and then to wind their clocks back 20 minutes on each Sunday in September.

"Everyone appreciates the long light evenings," Willett wrote. "Everyone laments their shrinkage as the days grow shorter, and nearly everyone has given utterance to a regret that the clear bright light of early morning, during Spring and Summer months, is so seldom seen or used."

Will Willett, Meet World War

Willett's idea got people talking. Unfortunately for him, the talk was mostly about what a harebrained scheme he was proposing. But skeptics' minds changed in World War I, when saving energy was deemed vital. Germany and Austria instituted Daylight Saving Time in 1916. They were followed later that year by other European countries, including Britain of course, where it's known as "British Summer Time."

The United States adopted Daylight Saving Time in 1918, but abandoned it after only seven months because it was so unpopular. Farmers, in particular, never liked the time change, grumbling that their cows and chickens didn't adjust their clocks.

Yet World War II brought Daylight Saving Time back as "War Time." In the United States, clocks were kept one hour ahead of standard time year-round from 1942 to 1945. In England, they were advanced two hours ahead of standard time during the summer and one hour ahead the rest of the year.

Synchronizing Our Watches

After the war, many U.S. states decided to stick with various versions of Daylight Saving Time. But different states - or even towns - changed their clocks on different dates, playing havoc with railway timetables and broadcast schedules. So Congress stepped in and standardized the time changes with the Uniform Time Act of 1966.

The current dates for Daylight Saving Time took effect in 1987. Clocks are set forward one hour at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in April in America (but the last week of March in Britain) and back one hour at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in October. Three states in America still don't observe the time change, or at least not entirely. Hawaii and Arizona (aside from the Navajo Indian Reservation) don't take part at all, and just parts of Indiana do.

Saving Daylight around the World

About 70 countries use some form of Daylight Saving Time with Japan being the only major industrialised nation that doesn't. Canada keeps things simple by resetting the clocks on the same dates as the United States. In the European Union, people set their clocks forward one month earlier, at the end of March, and back again at the end of October.

Countries near the equator generally don't change their clocks because they don't experience wide variances in the amount of seasonal daylight. South of the equator, where the seasons are reversed, Daylight Saving Time is reversed as well. In Australia, for example, clocks fall forward and spring back - lengthening the long summer days between October and March.