Now is the time of year when we grumble about losing a precious hour of sleep. Of course, we gain one in six months, but that is too far away to be thankful for. Who first thought of this strange abuse of the space-time continuum?
In ancient times, time did not need to be kept as precisely as today. Farmers knew when things needed to be done, and roosters provided handy alarm clocks. In cities, timekeeping was more important. and waterclocks, sundials, and other instruments were used. However, since the length of daylight hours varies, often clocks were used to divide the daylight hours evenly rather than to keep a standard time. Hours were longer in the summer than in the winter.
In 1784, Benjamin Franklin jokingly suggested to the French that they save money on candles by waking up earlier in the summer. This was not taken seriously. In fact, time was not kept very precisely at the …. era? However, as the Industrial Revolution took hold, and the train and telegraph were invented, precise timekeeping became more important.
In 1898, an entomologist from New Zealand, G. V. Hudson, suggested that the clock be altered in order to extend the hours of daylight after he got off work (he had an ulterior motive of wanting more time to study insects). A short time later, and Englishman named William Willett came up with the same idea (his ulterior motive was to gain more time for playing golf).
The British MP Robert Pearce introduced a bill for DST in 1908, but was unsuccessful. It was only during World War I that a country introduced Daylight Savings Time – but the country was Germany. However, the British, the Americans, and most of Europe decided that they wanted in on that too, and introduced Daylight Savings Time in the few years following. The main reason was to conserve coal and other resources by making the most of the daylight hours, and the war effort was what spurred the change.
Canada kept DST after the war, while the United States and much of Continental Europe did not (although it was temporarily re-introduced during WWII). It was only in the 1970s, as the result of an oil crisis, that it was finally adopted for good.
It’s only once a year. Don’t lose too much sleep over that lost hour – you’ll get it back eventually.
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