Daylight Savings Time
Daylight Savings Time History and Evolution
It is safe to say that the majority of people know that Daylight Savings Time is the time when we set our clocks ahead by one hour in order to save daylight. What many people may not know, however, is how it ever came to be; why it started, when it started and how it started are among the many questions that Daylight Savings Time history can answer.
Benjamin Franklin and the History of DST
Daylight Savings Time history began on a bright morning in Paris, when an accidental sudden noise woke Benjamin Franklin from his sleep at 6 o’clock in the morning. Reflecting on his experience, Franklin wrote in a letter to the Journal de Paris, “I imagined at first that a number of lamps had been brought into the room; but rubbing my eyes I perceived the light came in at the windows.”
Benjamin Franklin later conceived the idea that people could enjoy more of the daylight and conserve energy by moving the clocks forward by one hour in the spring. To balance the additional time of daylight created by the advancement of the clocks in the spring, the people would wind the clocks backwards in September.
World War I prompted the eventual adoption of Daylight Savings Time, due to the need to conserve coal during wartime. Germany and its allies were the first European nations to climb on board and by 1918, the United States formally adopted the law.
Daylight Savings Time Today
Today, many people still argue that Daylight Savings Time fails to make life any more productive, although it does persist. Most of the United States sets the clocks ahead at 2:00 a.m. on the second Sunday in March and reverts on the first Sunday in November. As a result, almost every state gets eight months of the year of Daylight Savings Time and just four months of “standard time.”
