OCT 27 THE ORIGINS BEHIND DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME

OCT 27  THE ORIGINS BEHIND DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME

In just over two weeks' time, dreaded Daylight Saving Time ends for the year. The good news is you get to sleep an extra hour on Saturday night. The bad news is the sun will be setting just as you get off work at 5pm. Depressing. It makes one wonder how the heck did such a crazy system ever start in the first place. Well, guess what? We here at the DUNER BLOG have the answer.

Believe it or not, the first person to suggest the concept of turning back the clock was Ben Franklin. However, he did not intend it for Americans. Here's the story. On one of his many trips to France, Franklin penned a piece about the night-owl habits of the Parisians. To save on the number of candles used during the endless night, he suggested shifting clocks and firing cannon at sunrise to stir people out of bed. The whiny article received little attention at the time.

It wasn't until the First World War that Daylight Saving Time was instituted on a national basis. Necessity is the mother of invention, and in 1916, Germany and Austria were losing the war. To conserve coal for the war effort, a plan was hatched to slow heating homes during the evening. Clocks were shifted during the summer. Called Sommerzeit, it was difficult to tell whether or not it actually worked or not. Nonetheless, the Allied powers copied the Axis. In 1916, the UK adopted the policy and the US passed legislation a year later as well.

Since then, the quirky policy has seen hundreds of revisions, alterations and rejections. For example, France repealed it after the war only to reinstate it decades later. The US has expanded DST by two months, Australia trimmed it by a month. Muslim countries discontinue the practice for the Ramadan month. Russia tried year-round Daylight Savings, but it only lasted three years. In short, for the last hundred years, people have been turning clocks back and forth and it's become a horrid mess.

Thankfully, we here at the DUNER BLOG have the solution to the world's time troubles. Let's all go back to Roman Standard Time. Back then, they only had sundials to tell time. So when the sun came up, that was hour ONE. Lunch time would be around FIVE, you get off work at NINE and go to bed sometime during dark hours. Let's face it, starting the day at midnight makes no sense whatsoever. Sometimes, modern human just overthink things..