If this coming Sunday you find yourself running around your house adjusting the clocks, or an hour late for an important meeting, know that there is a method to the madness.
The actual reason that we change our clocks to daylight saving time (DST), by falling back an hour in the fall, and leaping ahead by an hour in the spring is because it saves energy.
Changing our clocks in the spring “makes” the sun “set” one hour later, and therefore reduces the period between sunset and bedtime. An hour of daylight from the morning is moved to the evening.
This means that less electricity is used for lighting during that time of the day. As an added bonus, the extra sunlight in the evening tends to coax people out to the warm outdoors, leaving their energy needs behind.
It is even said that DST, by providing more light later, reduces both accidents and crime. Though some credit Benjamin Franklin (of $100 bill fame) for coming up with the idea in a letter he wrote to the Journal of Paris, that was only in jest.
The idea of DST was developed in 1907 by William Willet, an Englishman. He lobbied the British Parliament, unsuccessfully, to advance clocks by 20 minutes on each of four successive Saturdays in the spring, thereby increasing daylight and recreation time.
Wartime conservation measures, however, brought the adoption of DST throughout the western world. Seventy countries in the world now use it, Japan being the only major industrialized nation that doesn’t.
To try and save a little more energy before the mornings get too dark, the U.S. Congress decided to extend DST by four weeks beginning in 2007. Ontario, Manitoba, and Quebec have decided to follow suit. So, while the 2006 DST runs from April 2 through October 29, in 2007 DST will last from March 11 to November 4.
Winston Churchill summed it up well, by saying “an extra yawn one morning in the springtime, an extra snooze one night in the autumn is all that we ask in return for dazzling gifts. We borrow one hour one night in April; we pay it back with golden interest five months later.”
With files from Mike Ghenu.
