A Very Brief History of the Clock Change for Daylight Saving

OK. We appreciate that you may not care about daylight savings any more than simply having to change your watch or clock. But the information is here and you may find it strangely interesting. It may even help you in your next pub quiz. Although probably not.

Who's idea was it to mess about changing clocks ?

Apart from ancient ideas of time shifting, the first significant finger can be pointed to Benjamin Franklin in 1784. However, the general idea of modern Daylight Saving Time (DST) is generally thought to have been in 1895 by chap from New Zealand called George Vernon Hudson. He spent his spare time collecting insects and decided that it would be really good if he could actually see them. He suggested that we advance the clock two hours during the summer.

The same idea, considered independently, was proposed by a British chap called William Willet in 1905. The suggestion is that he disliked the idea that so many Londoners wasted so much of a summers day in bed. (We would argue that in that respect he's jolly lucky he's not still alive today). However, there's a significant chance that the real reason was that he was a keen golfer and disliked not being able to finish his golf round. Sounds a bit selfish so the 'good of humanity' thing about people staying in bed and wasting the day probably went down better.

The start...

Willet tried to get the idea through parliament until his death in 1915 and although the proposal had many prominent supporters, he didn't succeed. World War I changed the general opinion and the idea that DST could improve working hours and reduce energy consumption suddenly seemed to make more sense. DST was finally adopted in the UK in 1916 and the US in 1918.

And now...

Since it's initial adoption, DST has been up and down really depending on how strong the lobby of any interested party for or against the change has been. Farmers generally don't like it and leisure providers generally do.

More information

If you find this interesting (?), then visit Wikipedia to get a much longer breakdown of the history.

Note : Daylight Saving v. Daylight Savings

It's worth pointing out that the correct spelling is actually Daylight Saving not Daylight Savings. Lots of people think it has an s on the end. We clearly aren't any authority on this but we have to agree that the s kind of makes sense. However, if you want to do it properly, drop the s.