If you are one of the 70+ countries in the world
who change their clocks twice a year, you may have asked – or been asked – “Why?” This question is
usually met with vague answers like “I think it’s for the farmers?” But why do we voluntarily give
ourselves jet lag twice a year? And when did we start doing it? In this video, we’ll explore how
the practice came about, which countries adopted this method, and if it is still necessary today.
There is an enduring legend that when a Native American was told the reason for daylight savings
time, he remarked, “Only a White man would believe you could cut the foot off the top of the blanket,
sew it onto the bottom of the blanket, and you’d be left with more blanket.” The quote is popular
amongst those who are irked by the bi-annual clock changing; after all, it doesn’t account for the
fact there are more hours of daylight in the summer than in the winter. So, why change the
time if we can’t put more hours into the day? Well, it wasn’t always the case that time
was a set notion, and in ancient Rome, they did, in fact, make the days longer in the
summer. Just as we do, the Romans divided each day into twenty-four units, but instead of
being equal, the Roman twenty-four-hour day was made up of twelve hours of dark and twelve
hours of light. As they divided the hours of sunlight into twelve all year round, a Roman
hour during daylight would last seventy-five minutes during mid-summer and just forty-five
minutes in mid-winter. The changing length in hours was gradual and would even out during the
equinox when the day and night were roughly the same length. In this way, the Romans maximized
the working day during the summer and took advantage of the extra downtime in the winter.
American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin first planted the seed for modern daylight savings
time. While living in Paris during the summer in the late 18th century, he noticed how he would
often stay in bed after sunrise, and in 1784, he mused about how many candles people could save
by waking up and getting their tasks done earlier to make total use of the extended days. However,
at that time, it had little to do with clocks, as people were used to resetting their watches
to “local time.” Clock synchronization did not happen until the 1830s with the introduction
of the electric telegraph. Franklin’s solution was to fire cannons in each square as
the sun rose “to wake up the sluggards effectually and make them open their eyes
to see their true interest.” So, for those night owls that dread the clocks “springing
forward,” it could have been a lot worse! Nearly one hundred years later, in 1895, an
amateur New Zealand entomologist and professional postman, George Hudson, lamented his lack of time
during the day to dedicate to hunting bugs. He proposed that the clocks should be changed by two
hours in the summertime to allow more daylight for leisure time in the evening. He also argued that
this would save on the use of artificial light and greatly benefit “the numerous classes who
are obliged to work indoors all day, and who, under existing arrangements, get a minimum of
fresh air and sunshine.” Although some agreed with his suggestion, it was mostly met with ridicule.
In 1862, the Prince of Wales and future King Edward VII purchased the Sandringham
Estate in Norfolk as a retreat from London, as he wanted a place he could enjoy his hobby
of hunting. One of his main leisure pursuits was shooting. To make the most of the winter daylight,
he invented Sandringham Time, instructing that the clocks on his Sandringham Estate should be set
to half an hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. The man who would finally realize the dream of
forcing people to get up earlier in the summer lived in Chislehurst in southeast London. He was a
builder named William Willett, and he loved to get up at the crack of dawn during the summer to go
horse riding. One particularly glorious morning in 1905, Willett noticed that many people were still
snoozing in bed with their curtains drawn to keep out the sunlight. Willett decided it would be much
better for them to be up and about as he was and decided that someone should do something about it.
And so, he did. By 1907, Willett had self-published a pamphlet entitled “The Waste of
Daylight,” in which he proposed that the clocks should be moved forward by twenty-minute
increments every week in April and then reversed in the same way in September. He cited
more time for recreational activities as well as lowering the cost of lighting as reasons for the
change. Other early birds came flocking to support the idea, including politicians David Lloyd George
and Winston Churchill, President of the Board of Trade at that time. Churchill gave an impassioned
speech supporting daylight savings, declaring, “An extra yawn one morning in the springtime, an
extra snooze one night in the autumn is all that we ask in return for dazzling gifts. We borrow
an hour one night in April; we pay it back with golden interest five months later.” Arthur Conan
Doyle also supported the proposal, but although he agreed with the principle, Doyle disliked the idea
of a gradual change, stating, “A single alteration of an hour would be a round number, and cause less
confusion.” Although a bill to implement the time change was debated in parliament, its opponents
included British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, and it received strong opposition from the
farmers, who followed the sun and not the clock and argued that a clock change would put them out
of sync with the non-farming world. The bill was narrowly defeated in 1909. Willett continued
to advocate for a summertime change until his death in 1915, just one year before daylight
savings was finally implemented in the UK. On April 30, 1916, Germany became the first
country to implement daylight savings time. It was well into the First World War, and Kaiser Wilhelm
II hoped that by moving the clocks forward, the Germans could save much-needed coal by reducing
the need for artificial lighting. By May 17, the United Kingdom had decided to follow suit, and on
Sunday, May 21, the British changed their clocks for the first time. It wasn’t long before France,
Italy, Russia, and Australia wound their clocks forward. After America joined the war in 1918,
they also adopted DST. Although America also cited fuel saving as the reason for the change, the US
Chamber of Commerce was the major backer of the policy, causing some to argue that the change in
time was to encourage Americans finishing work to make the most of the evenings by indulging in some
retail therapy. Recreational activities and sports certainly gained a boost from the change, with
golf ball sales skyrocketing and baseball games enjoying a later start time due to the lighter
evenings. However, the movie industry hated the new time change, as people were less likely to
want to sit in a dark theater when it was light outside. Farmers get a lot of flack about why we
have daylight savings, but American farmers – like the British ones – felt it was detrimental to them
as they had less time in the morning to collect milk and harvest crops ready to go to market.
After the war, Germany ceased to use DST, but countries such as the United Kingdom and Ireland
continued to change their clocks. Some countries were divided as to whether or not to keep DST.
In France, the rural population didn’t like it and abandoned it by 1920, whereas the major cities
still benefited from the system and continued to use it. In 1923, the French Cabinet decreed they
would end the clock changes, but that working hours would start and stop thirty minutes earlier
from the end of April to the start of November. The Parisians, however, refused to give up DST and
continued the seasonal time change. New York City held onto the lighter summer evenings in America,
but the surrounding rural areas did not. The chaotic time differences were exacerbated as each
municipality chose if and when the clocks changed, causing confusion due to oscillating time
changes. According to records, drivers on the bus route traveling from Steubenville, Ohio,
to Moundsville, West Virginia, had to change the clock no less than seven times in forty miles!
Daylight savings once again spread throughout Europe with the outbreak of World War II. As the
Nazis began invading and occupying countries such as Poland and Denmark, changing the clocks was
one of their enforced rules. In the Netherlands, they moved the local time forward by one hour and
forty minutes, bringing it in line with Central European Summer Time. However, the Dutch didn’t
change the clocks back in the fall and remained on DST year-round until 1942. After 1942, the
Dutch adopted the twice-yearly clock change but only for three years before abolishing it. In
Britain, where they had continued to practice DST, they doubled down, changing the clocks to
one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time in the winter and two hours ahead in the summer
to try and increase productivity. In America, Franklin Roosevelt enacted a year-round
DST after the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war, many countries kept DST
in an effort to conserve fuel needed to rebuild their nations. Still, later, a host of
European countries, including France and Italy, repealed the measures as they were
an uncomfortable reminder of the war. In America, ongoing confusion led to Lyndon B.
Johnson signing the 1966 Uniform Time Act – the first peacetime DST law in the US. It stated that
states could adopt DST or opt out, but should they choose to use the system, it would be observed
for six months of the year before returning to standard time for six months. Between 1968 and
1971, Britain tried sticking to DST all year round, but having an extra hour of darkness in the
mornings during winter proved deeply unpopular. During the 1970s, another global crisis
led to the majority of European countries reintroducing DST. In 1973, Richard Nixon tried
to call for year-round daylight savings time, but it was as disliked as it was in the UK.
As energy prices shot up worldwide due to the oil crisis, Europe was again changing
its clocks by the end of the 1970s. In 1986, the US extended their DST months to
seven, but it was no longer about saving money but making money. The golf industry and
manufacturers of barbeque equipment claim that the extra month was worth between $200
million and $400 million in sales. In 1996, the European Union standardized the DST schedule.
It made it what it is today, with all countries in the European Economic Area, including
Switzerland but with the exception of Iceland, changing their clocks at 01:00 UTC on the last
Sunday of March and the last Sunday of October. In 2005, the US extended its summer season again,
observing eight months of Daylight Savings Time. Since its conception, the peacetime use of DST
has been questioned, as the pros don’t seem to outweigh the cons. In general, lighter evenings
in the summer seem to help retail, sports, and tourism but harm agricultural and mail delivery
workers. Claims that DST reduces energy usage, traffic accidents, and outdoor crimes have
never been completely proven. In America, some studies have shown that energy costs rise due
to DST due to increased air-conditioning use. Not only are there not many quantifiable bonuses of
DST, but a Finnish medical study also suggested that changing the clocks disrupts the body’s
circadian rhythms, which may lead to strokes. In 2019, the European Parliament voted in
favor of removing DST from the EU, with each member state having to decide whether to remain on
“summer” or “winter” time permanently. Obviously, the events of 2020 put that decision on the back
burner, and plans have not yet been set in motion. The future of daylight savings time remains
uncertain, and only about a third of the world’s countries still use DST. It is most common in
Europe, but it is also practiced in North America, South America, Australia, New Zealand,
Egypt, and parts of the Middle East. So, what do you think? Is daylight savings worth
observing? Let us know in the comments. How would you like to get a deeper understanding
of history, impress your friends, and predict the future more accurately based on past events?
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