Lots of people erroneously credit Benjamin Franklin for the hour of sleep they will lose tonight, but it’s actually William Willet’s fault. He came up with the idea of Daylight Savings Time in 1905 “during a pre-breakfast ride, when he observed with dismay how many Londoners slept through a large part of a summer day. An avid golfer, he also disliked cutting short his round at dusk. His solution was to advance the clock during the summer months, a proposal he published two years later.He lobbied unsuccessfully for the proposal until his death in 1915.”

Not surprisingly, the proposal had many people who supported it as well as plenty who didn’t. The issue of DST soon became political:

Winston Churchill argued that it enlarges “the opportunities for the pursuit of health and happiness among the millions of people who live in this country”. Robertson Davies, however, detected “the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves” [there's a Benjamin Franklin reference, since he authored that phrase], and wags have dubbed it “Daylight Slaving Time”.

World War I changed the political equation, as DST was promoted as a way to alleviate hardships from wartime coal shortages and air raid blackouts. After Germany led the way, the United Kingdom first used DST on May 21, 1916. U.S. retailing and manufacturing interests led by Pittsburgh industrialist Robert Garland soon began lobbying for DST, but were opposed by railroads. The U.S.’s 1917 entry to the war overcame objections, and DST was established in 1918.

So don’t forget that tonight you’ll need to adjust your clocks one hour forward so that you can enjoy an extra hour of daylight tomorrow.


Quotes were taken from Wikipedia, where you can read more than you ever wanted to know about Daylight Savings Time’s origins.

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