Why Daylight Saving Time?

An article by author Laura Hill Timpanaro

Daylight Savings Time

This year we turn the clocks back on November 3, at 2am, making the mornings brighter and the evenings a bit darker.  If you are like me you've probably wondered why we turn the clocks back at all.

For thousands of years people in diverse cultures have shifted their workdays to match the sunlit hours.  But it wasn’t until 1784 that the modern concept of Daylight Saving Time, or DST, was introduced.  Ben Franklin was the first to observe during a trip to Paris that great economical saving could be realized if the hours of night were shifted back so less candles would be burned in the evenings to light rooms and places of business.

The idea didn’t catch on.

100 years later, a New Zealand entomologist, George Vernon Hudson, suggested a similar concept of lengthening the evening daylight hours, though not for economic reasons but for a longer workday.

English builder William Willet, a confirmed summer enthusiast, took up the cause of DST in hopes of extending the warm summer evening hours for recreation.  He financed a bill that was brought to the House of Commons in 1908 by Robert Pearce, the idea was adopted but died under a storm of opposition.

It took a war to make it happen.

The concept of modern Daylight Savings Time was first truly adopted by the Germans during World War 1. On April 30, 1916 clocks were officially turned forward one hour to decrease the use of artificial lighting and save energy for the war effort.  Britain and the United States quickly followed suit.

In 1942, during the Second World War, President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted a year-round DST in the United States, called “War Time.”  This lasted from the bombing of Pearl Harbor until the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, and the US returned to "Peace Time."

Daylight Saving Time continued to be observed on a compulsory basis, adopted by states that desired it through the mid 1960s.  This caused terrible confusion in the transportation and broadcasting industries who were trying to schedule trains, buses and television programming.  In 1966 Congress voted to adopt the Uniform Time Act stating that DST would start on the last Sunday of April and end on the last Sunday of October.

Here to stay.

Though DST has been revised, lasting ten months in the US during the 1974 oil embargo, the timing has been largely unchanged, currently beginning on the second Sunday in March and ending on the first Sunday in November. 

The benefit of Daylight Savings Time has been hotly contested with supporters arguing that the added morning fall sunlight benefits farmers, commuters and children traveling to schools.  Others argue that there is no energy saving benefit and that work is lost while people adjust to the new schedule.  Whatever side of the debate you are on Monday will bring lighter mornings and darker nights.  It looks like Daylight Savings Time is here to stay, at least for now.

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