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Ancient Civilizations Practice Similar Time Shift
Although the official notion of Daylight Savings Time has only been used for about 100 years, similiar practices of conserving daylight coordinated with the Sun have been in use for centuries. For instance, the Roman water clocks used different scales for different months of the year. -
Benjamin Franklin Proposes A Change In Sleep Schedules
Despite preaching the apphorism "early to bed and early to rise", Benjamin Franklin was not carrying up with this at the old age of 78. It was around this time that he was disturbed one morning during the summer and had the epiphany that so much energy had the potential to be saved if Parisians simply used "sunshine instead of candles." So compelled by this discovery, he wrote it down in an essay and has since been popularly (though erroneously) accredited with "inventing" DST. -
William Willett Leads The First Campaign To Implement Daylight Savings Time
While on a horseback ride early in the morning in London, he had an epiphany that more people should enjoy the plentiful sunlight by moving their clocks forward 80 minutes between the months of April and October. So later on, just 2 years later he wrote and published a brochure called "The Waste of Daylight" and spent much of his personal fotune supporting the idea in congress. Sadly he died at 58, one year before his dream came to life. -
Germany Becomes The First Country To Enact Daylight Saving Time
Sadly it took World War I for Willett’s dream to come true, but on April 30, 1916, Germany enacted daylight saving time in order to conserve electricity for the war effort. The UK followed suitr only weeks after and introduced “summer time.” -
Daylight Saving in the United States Begins With Local Practices
Daylight Savings as a national mandate was repealed in 1919 hwoever some states and cities such as New York and Chicago continue to participate and shift their clocks at certain times of the year. However this quickly became chaotic with neighboring towns and cities operating on completely different timezones despite their proximity. Finally order came about in 1966 with Uniform Time Act, which standardized daylight savings time,however, states still had the option to opt entirely. -
Some States and Territories Ignore it
Hawaii and Arizona—with the exception of the state’s Navajo Nation—do not observe daylight saving time, and the U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands also remain on standard time year-round. Some Amish communities also choose not to participate in daylight saving time. -
Evidence does not conclusively point to energy conservation as a result of daylight saving
Dating back to Willett, daylight saving advocates have touted energy conservation as an economic benefit. A U.S. Department of Transportation study in the 1970s concluded that total electricity savings associated with daylight saving time amounted to about 1 percent in the spring and fall months. As air conditioning has become more widespread, however, more recent studies have found that cost savings on lighting are more than offset by greater cooling expenses. University of California Santa Bar -
Farmers Lead The Resistance Against Daylight Savings
Contrary to popular belief, American farmers did not lobby for daylight saving to have more time to work in the fields; in fact, the agriculture industry was deeply opposed to the time switch when it was first implemented on March 31, 1918, as a wartime measure. The sun, not the clock, dictated farmers’ schedules, so daylight saving was very disruptive. Farmers' interests led the fight for the 1919 repeal of national daylight saving time, which passed after Congress voted to override the Pres. -
Modern DST History in the US
The US Congress extended DST to a period of ten months in 1974 and eight months in 1975, in hopes to save energy following the 1973 oil embargo. The trial period showed that DST saved the energy equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil each day, but DST still proved to be controversial. Many complained that the dark winter mornings endangered the lives of children going to school. -
Daylight Saving Today
Daylight Saving Time is now in use in over 70 countries worldwide and affects over a billion people every year. The beginning and end dates vary from one country to another. In 1996, the European Union (EU) standardized an EU-wide DST schedule, which runs from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October. -
Energy Policy Act of 2005
After the energy crisis was over in 1976, the DST schedule in the US was revised several times throughout the years. From 1987 to 2006, the country observed DST for about seven months each year. The current schedule was introduced in 2007 and follows the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which extended the period by about one month. Today, DST starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November. -
Is Daylight Savings Time Bad For Us
Although a U.S. Department of Transportation study in the 1970s found that daylight saving trimmed electricity usage by about 1 percent, later studies have shown that the savings is offset by air conditioners running in warmer climates. It may not all be for naught, however. Another study, performed in 2007 by the RAND Corporation found that the increase in daylight in spring led to a roughly 10 percent drop in vehicular crashes. -
Purpose of Daylight Savings
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, Daylight Saving Time is meant to save energy, reduce traffic accidents, and reduce crime. It all sounds rational on the surface, but the tradition is one with an odd heritage and questionable results. -
Does it Actually Save Energy
The answer is maybe, according to a survey of research collected by Scientific American. In 2007, the California Energy Commission found only a 0.2% savings, and with a margin of error of 1.5%, it could have easily been an increase. The U.S. Department of Energy has said that there is a 0.5% saving in electricity. -
Health Effects
There is a productivity loss, according to David Wagner and Christopher Barnes, professors of management at the University of Oregon and University of Washington. Their studies found “workers tend to ‘cyberloaf,'” using computers for non-work purposes, on Mondays after a shift to Daylight Saving. Daylight Saving also brings a slight rise in the number of heart attacks, from 5% according to Swedish researchers in 1987 to 10% in a University of Alabama study. But car accident fatalities go down.
