Every year at about this time, most of North America roll their clocks forward in a vain attempt to save energy. I say vain attempt because there hasn’t been any sound evidence that adjusting the clocks to chase the sunshine has actually resulted in any reduction in the demand for energy.

The story of daylight saving time goes back to 1784 when Benjamin Franklin mused about how many candles could be saved if the clocks were adjusted so that people were more in-sync with the Sun. Since then, the idea reared its ugly head every few decades, but it wasn’t until the advent of standard time in the United States and Canada, led by Sandford Flemming in about 1876 and in other countries over the next few decades, that it was even possible to propose something called Daylight Saving Time.

In 1905, William Willett, a well-known builder of houses in the United Kingdom and a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, came to the conclusion while out riding his horse early one morning that there were a lot of people not taking advantage of the early morning sunlight in the spring and summer. So he made it his mission to make them get up earlier in the morning by setting the clocks forward in the spring, and in 1907 published a pamphlet entitled The Waste of Daylight and thus began his campaign for the adoption of daylight saving time in the U.K.

Over the next few years, proposals to implement Daylight Saving Time were made but not adopted. However, in 1916, about a year and a half into World War I, the British Prime Minister of the day was asked in Parliament that, given there was a need to conserve electricity, gas, and oil for the war effort, would the government propose legislation along the lines of an earlier bill to introduce Daylight Saving Time. The Prime Minister said: No, sir, I cannot introduce legislation on this contentious subject. 

Naturally, the topic came up repeatedly over the course of the next few weeks.

It ended up being Germany who decreed that summer daylight saving time would be instituted in Germany as a wartime measure starting at the end of April 1916, when the clocks in Germany would be set forward an hour, and that it would remain in effect until the beginning of October. Companies were strongly discouraged by the government from changing their business hours by an hour to maintain the same patterns relative to the rising and setting of the sun.

The U.K. finally implemented DST legislation in May 1916. Of course, when it was implemented, many munitions workers in the U.K. that were on shifts that started at 6 AM the next day overslept and had their wages docked for being late.

In the United States, Daylight Saving Time was signed into law for the first time on March 19, 1918, and two weeks later Americans rolled their clocks forward by an hour on Sunday, March 31.

Over the years, there have been numerous reasons given for why Daylight Saving Time should be implemented, including:

• It benefits the farmers (spoiler: cows don’t understand clocks, and thus, the farmers get even more out of sync with the rest of society), and
• It saves energy (except there’s no strong evidence to support that it does and stronger evidence that suggests it actually results in increases in energy consumption; Australia even tried to use it to offset power consumption during the 2000 Olympic games and found that demand for electricity did not decrease as a result).

But the reality is that there are significant negative consequences whenever the clocks are rolled forward in the spring or back in the fall. Perhaps the most disturbing is the fact that in the week immediately following the changing of the clocks, there is an increase in accidents because people’s sleep patterns are disrupted, and there’s a 10% increase in the likelihood that you’ll experience a heart attack in the days immediately following the time change.

When the U.S. changed the dates Daylight Saving Time started and ended via the US Energy Policy Act of 2005, the goal was to achieve a 1% reduction in energy consumption, but as far as we can tell, this wasn’t achieved. And there was reportedly lobbying for it by the convenience stores industry and sporting goods manufacturers because it would mean people would be out later in the evening playing sports and buying snacks, so one could ask whether the motivation to extend it was to save energy or sell soccer balls.

Yet, except for a couple of states in the U.S. and the province of Saskatchewan in Canada that don’t change their clocks, we continue to adjust our clocks twice a year, despite the fact it’s not saving energy, despite the increase in injuries, and despite the fact that the cows don’t care.

If you want to learn more about the history of daylight saving time, we’d like to recommend David Prerau’s book titled Seize the Daylight: The curious and contentious story of daylight saving time.

More Information

Daylight Saving Time (timeanddate)

The Waste of Daylight (National Museums Scotland)