Do not forget to “spring forward” this weekend!

Do not forget to “spring forward” this weekend!

Many of us cringe when we think we are going to lose an hour of our valuable weekend by “springing forward” this Sunday. I personally do not like losing an hour, but I do enjoy the extra daylight. I thought I would investigate how “Daylight Saving Time” started, the complaints about it and the benefits.

We have Benjamin Franklin to thank for coming up with the original concept. Franklin, who wrote the proverb “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise,” was among the first to suggest the idea. In 1784, Franklin was U.S.. ambassador to France, living in Paris, and awoke earlier than usual one morning to see light streaming through his window. He then had an idea that he could make use of the “free sunshine” for many more hours saving on expensive candles. He stated in an essay that is everyone would wake up earlier that could get more done in the daylight and save money on candles. The basic concept of “Daylight Saving Time”, DST, was introduced.

Some historians say that modern DST was first proposed in 1895 by George Vernon Hudson, an entomologist from New Zealand. Hudson presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society that proposed a two-hour shift forward in October and a two-hour shift back in March. He followed up his proposal with an article in 1898, and although there was interest in the idea, it was never followed through.

Timeanddate.com says; “The invention of DST was mainly credited to William Willett in 1905 when he came up with the idea of moving the clocks forward in the summer to take advantage of the daylight in the mornings and the lighter evenings. His proposal suggested moving the clocks 20 minutes forward each of four Sundays in April, and switching them back by the same amount on four Sundays in September. The first Daylight Saving Bill was drafted in 1909 and presented to Parliament several times and examined by a select committee. However, the bill was opposed by many, especially farmers and thus the bill was never made into a law. Willett died in 1915 without getting the chance to see his idea come to life.”

Almost 200 years after Ben Franklin’s essay, the United States adopted the basic plan in an effort to conserve energy during World War I. The practice of changing the clocks has had a somewhat bumpy history in the United States. It was first established in 1918, but then repealed a year later. During World War II, the country again took up the practice to conserve energy from 1942 to 1945. In 1966 the United States officially adopted the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which outlined Daylight Saving Time to begin on the last Sunday of April and end on the last Sunday in October.

https://www.ketknbc.com/weather/weather-talk/why-do-we-have-daylight-saving-time