officially adopted daylight-saving time for the first time during WW I, and again during World War II.īut it was not without controversy, even then.īy the end of WW I, city dwellers learned to love daylight saving, Prerau said.
Not to be left in the dark by our European counterparts, the U.S. That launched a daylight-saving domino effect in countries around Europe.īritain was finally shamed into adopting the policy three weeks after Germany. Seeing merit in Willett’s bright idea, they adopted it in 1916 to conserve energy and resources during World War I. Willett detailed his time-wise idea in a pamphlet, “The Waste of Daylight,” and spent years lobbying Parliament in vain to adopt daylight-saving time – he died in 1915 before that would happen, Prerau said. “He used to go for early-morning horseback rides and wondered why nobody else was up enjoying this beautiful time of day,” Prerau said. from M.I.T.Īlthough Franklin certainly gets a historical nod for his amusing social commentary about our waste of perfectly good sunlight, Prerau points to British early riser and golf fanatic William Willett as the godfather of daylight-saving time.
Congress back in 2005 when they enacted a law extending daylight saving time as an energy saving measure, and he also has been a consultant on DST to the United Kingdom Parliament. Image/ĭavid Prerau, recognized as one of the country’s leading experts on our human quest for saving time, has devoted much of his life to chronicling the history and science of DST. Another bright idea from Ben Franklin: Daylight Savings Time. So here we are, caught somewhere between popping sleep aids and chugging Red Bull, not sure how to feel about our collective changing of the clocks. Meanwhile, sleep researchers insist we should be cutting back on our waking hours if we really want to live long and prosper. Twice a year we’re forced to adjust our sleep habits, synchronizing our biological and digital clocks in order to squeeze more sunlight into our waking hours. More than two centuries later, the joke’s still on us.ĭaylight-saving time is no longer just an amusing idea it’s taken hold with a vengeance. 4 at 2 a.m., you gain an hour of sleep by setting your clock back one hour.Īs always, it’s “Spring ahead, fall back” when it comes to our bi-annual clock adjusting ritual.īut why do we fall back every year, only to spring ahead four months later? A brief historyīen Franklin was only kidding when he suggested 234 years ago that towns should employ the use of church bells or cannon blasts, if necessary, to wake citizens at sunrise so they could take full advantage of sunlight – a thrifty alternative to pricy candle power. MANCHESTER, NH – It’s the weekend you’ve all been waiting for - the end of Daylight Saving Time.
0 kommentar(er)
