Ever wondered why you always have to adjust your clocks by one hour in the spring, and then again in the autumn?
The answer is surprisingly simple: to make good use of the extra daylight we get in the Summer.
Hence, we waste less fuel on lighting during the day.
In England, Daylight Saving Time (DST) is implemented by moving the clocks 1 hour forward at 1am on the last Sunday of March, and 1 hour back at 2 am on the last Sunday of October (just last Sunday, at the time of writing this article).
It’s not really seen in countries closer to the equator, where daylight hours don’t change enough to need to implement DST, nor is it seen in countries closest to the North Pole where the duration of sunlight varies widely.
It was implemented in the UK during World War I, and interestingly, during World War II there was something called British Double Summer Time, where the clocks were moved forwards by two hours rather than one in the spring in order to minimise fuel wasted on lighting.
The idea of DST can be traced all the way back to 1784 when a well-known American figure called Benjamin Franklin wrote a satirical letter to the Parisians on how they should change their sleep schedules to save money on lighting methods back then such as candles.
Daylight Saving Time was properly proposed by a New Zealand entomologist called George Vernon Hudson in 1895.
Then, the idea really spread in Britain after a man called William Willet (who by the way, happens to be the great-great-grandfather of Coldplay co-founder Chris Martin) campaigned for DST in Britain.
Willet was unfortunately unsuccessful during his lifetime, and DST was only implemented in the UK in 1916, one year after he died, which was inspired by the Germans having just moved their clocks back by an hour.
So, now you know why we have Daylight Saving time!
