When Americans in most states advance their clocks ahead one hour on the second Sunday in March, that event will be just one more iteration of a practice to which Americans and many others worldwide are well accustomed – Daylight Saving Time. But Daylight Saving Time wasn’t always such a routine idea.
The first Daylight Saving Time policy began in Germany on May 1, 1916, in the hopes that it would save energy during World War I. But, although Germans were the first to start messing with their clocks, they likely got the idea from British citizen William Willett, who, in 1907, had published The Waste of Daylight. Though Willett did mention that changing the clocks would save money to reduce the use of artificial lighting, his main purpose was the increased enjoyment of sunlight.
The most vocal lobby pushing for longer periods of daylight time has been the chambers of commerce.
Michael Downing
100 years later, the madness of daylight saving time endures
It has been more than one hundred years since Congress passed the first daylight saving legislation. However, more and more people are doubting the wisdom of changing the clocks every year.
In the winter of 2017, Florida lawmakers followed the lead of nineteen other states — Alabama, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming and passed the Sunshine Protection Act, ensuring daylight saving all year long.
If approved by the U.S. House and signed into law by Joe Biden, the Sunshine Protection Act would apply to states that observe DST, which most states do eight months out of the year. Standard Time will continue to be used in the two states that keep it year-round, Arizona and Hawaii. The U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands would also continue to observe permanent standard time.
While many studies have shown that making DST permanent could benefit the economy and the country, it is not clear that these new studies are not relying on the same overly optimistic math that led the original proponents of daylight saving to predict vast energy savings, crisper farm products harvested before the morning dew dried and lessened eye strain for industrial workers.
But that’s not going to stop Florida legislators are lauding the benefits of putting “more sunshine in our lives.”
It’s absurd — and fitting – that a century later, supporters and opponents of daylight saving are still in the dark about the basics. In spite of its name, daylight saving has never saved anyone anything. However, it has proven to be one of the most effective drivers of retail spending.
It’s all about the Benjamins
The Calder Act was passed by Woodrow Wilson on March 19, 1918, requiring Americans to set their clocks to standard time. In less than two weeks, they would have to change their clocks for the nation’s first daylight saving experiment on March 31, abandoning standard time.
However, things did not proceed according to plan. Easter Sunday fell on March 31 in 1918, which caused a lot of people to arrive late for church services. After daylight saving was instituted, rural and evangelical opponents charged daylight saving with subverting “God’s time.”
Newspapers were flooded with letters complaining about how it upset astronomical data, made almanacs useless, and stopped Americans from getting the freshest air in the morning.
Daylight saving was repealed within a year. Neglect, however, allowed the practice to flourish.
Several cities, including New York, adopted their own Daylight Saving policies in 1920. This movement was spurred on by the Chamber of Commerce on behalf of department store owners, who had noticed that later sunset times encouraged people to shop on their way home from work.