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Who Started Daylight Saving Time?

2010-11-07 07:29:19

Sat Nov 6, 10:06 am ET

Daylight saving time, a source of confusion and mystery for many, will strike

again this weekend. The idea of resetting clocks forward an hour in the spring

and back an hour in the fall was first suggested by Benjamin Franklin in his

essay "An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light," which was

published in the Journal de Paris in April 1784, as a way to save electricity.

Franklin's suggestion was largely overlooked until it was brought up again in

1907 by Englishman William Willett, who penned a pamphlet called "The Waste of

Daylight." Although the British House of Commons rejected Willett's proposal to

advance the clock one hour in the spring and back again in autumn in 1908,

British Summer Time was introduced by the Parliament in 1916.

Many other countries change their clocks when adjusting to summer time, but the

United States only began doing so towards the end of World War I in an attempt

to conserve energy. The House of Representatives voted 252 to 40 to pass a law

"to save daylight," with the official first daylight saving time taking place

on March 15, 1918. This was initially met with much resistance, according

Michael Downing, author of the book "Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of

Daylight Saving Time."

"When the Congress poked its finger into the face of every clock in the

country, millions of Americans winced," Downing wrote. "United by a

determination to beat back the big hand of government," daylight saving time

opponents "raised holy hell, vowing to return the nation to real time, normal

time, farm time, sun time-the time they liked to think of as "God's time.'"

Despite the public outcry, government officials enforced the time change until

1919, and allowed state and local governments to decide whether to continue the

practice. It was reinstituted during World War II but, again, after the war the

decision fell to the states.

In fact, even when Congress officially made the time change a law under the

Uniform Time Act of 1966, it only stated that if the public decided to observe

daylight saving time, it must do so uniformly. Hawaii and Arizona (with the

exception of the Navajo Reservation), still choose not to partake in the

convention, as do some U.S. territories, including American Samoa, Guam, Puerto

Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Originally, clocks were sprung forward on the last Sunday in April and turned

back on the last Sunday in October, but the Energy Policy Act of 2005 shifted

the start of daylight saving time to the second Sunday in March and the end to

the first Sunday in November.