‘Chaos of time’: The history of daylight saving time, why we spring forward

David Murray
Great Falls Tribune

On Monday morning millions of American commuters will pull into work a little groggier than usual. The arrival of daylight savings time robs all of us of an extra hour of sleep.

They may feel a bit more refreshed during the ride home; their path lit up by something more than the grey semi-darkness we've become accustomed to since last October.

"Spring forward - Fall back." That clever aphorisim is supposed to be helpful; but probably generates as much confusion as anything else when it comes to moving the clock back and forth - a semiannual ritual that we now refer to as daylight saving time.

To be clear, Sunday’s advance of the clock marks the end of standard time - a measure of the hours that was once considered the one and only official measurement of the day's passage. March 11 will mark the official beginning of daylight saving time - a once temporary timekeeping convenience that is now employed for eight months of each year.

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Daylight Saving Time ends at 2 a.m. Sunday morning. Its effectiveness has been questioned for 200 years.

So how did this confusing mess get started?

The original idea of a daylight saving time is often attributed to the American patriot and scientist  Benjamin Franklin. It was in 1784 while serving as the United States’ first ambassador to France that Franklin penned an essay to the editor of The Journal of Paris titled, “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light.”

In that epistle, Franklin calculated that Parisians could save more than 96 million lives each year in the cost of candles (about $200 million in today’s dollars) if they simply shifted their clocks back an hour each spring to make better use of the extra daylight.

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Although the staggering amount Franklin calculated led some to take his suggestion seriously, it was almost certainly concocted as a joke. To acclimate Parisians to the sudden shift in time, Franklin suggested that as soon as the sun rose every church in the city should begin ringing its bells and cannon should be fired on every street, “to wake the sluggards effectually …”

Daylight savings time ends at 2 a.m. Sunday morning.

Serious or jocular, Franklin’s suggestion remained unfulfilled for more than a century. It wasn’t until the international crisis of World War I that the idea was revisited with a humorless resolve.

War-torn Germany, under the leadership of Kaiser Wilhelm II, was the first country to adopt daylight saving time – or “fast time” as it was then called – as a means to minimize artificial lighting and save fuel for the war effort. The act was quickly followed in both Great Britain and France, where it was also credited with getting in an extra hour for cultivation of war gardens.

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The cause for turning the clocks back an hour in the United States was taken up by Pittsburgh industrialist Robert Garland. Garland successfully lobbied for the “Standard Time Act,” establishing that U.S. clocks be set back one hour between March 31 and Oct. 27.

The act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on March 19, 1918, but was repealed just seven months later. The war had ended, and nobody seemed to like the idea, especially American dairy farmers who worked tirelessly to overturn the Standard Time Act, even overcoming a veto by Wilson.

Undaunted, Garland continued to advocate for daylight saving time. For the next 20 years, he argued before any group that would invite him that a permanent daylight saving time would improve industrial efficiency and add an additional hour so Americans could enjoy more outdoor activities such as golf, tennis and baseball. He even enlisted the support of the motion-picture industry, arguing that daylight saving would increase attendance at the theaters.

Garland’s efforts were largely unsuccessful, although several large U.S. cities including Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston and New York did adopt the time switch. It wasn’t until World War II that the practice once again became universal.

In 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law an act establishing “War Time,” setting the nation’s clocks back for one hour the full year round. The time change lasted from Feb. 9, 1942, to Sept. 30, 1945.

In 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law an act establishing “War Time,” setting the nation’s clocks back for one hour the full year round. The time change lasted from Feb. 9, 1942, to Sept. 30, 1945. The law was repealed just four weeks after the war ended, but allowed individual states and local to adopt their own daylight saving scheme without regard to any national standard.

This led to a 20-year period that Time Magazine referred to in 1963 as “a chaos of clocks.”

In 1965, there were 23 different pairs of start and end dates to daylight saving in Iowa alone. In Minnesota, the “twin cities” of Minneapolis and St. Paul observed the beginning of daylight saving time two weeks apart despite being a single metropolitan area only separated by the Mississippi River. Passengers on a 35-mile bus ride from Steubenville, Ohio, to Moundsville, West Virginia, passed through seven time changes during their 40 minutes on the bus.

The most bitter time divide took place in Indiana. In 1949, the Indiana General Assembly passed a law to put the entire state in the Central time zone and outlawing daylight saving time. Many rural counties simply chose to ignore it. The general assembly passed a similar law again in 1957, this time with Indiana Gov. Harold Handley vowing to enforce the law by withdrawing state aid from the communities who continued to implement daylight saving time. Twelve western Indiana counties continued to rebel, and the law was eventually scrapped.

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The widespread confusion, especially for trains, buses, airlines and the broadcast industry, led Congress to pass the Uniform Time Act of 1966. The law set a uniform national standard for daylight saving to begin at 2 a.m. local time on the last Sunday in April and to end it at 2 a.m. local time on the last Sunday in October.

What the Uniform Time Act did not do was require all states to observe daylight saving if their legislature permitted them not to.

Hawaii and Arizona decided to opt out entirely – except for the Navajo Nation in Arizona which does; however the Hopi Nation (which is entirely surrounded by the Navajo Nation) does not. In effect there’s a giant doughnut-shaped area of Arizona that does observe daylight saving time, except for the hole in the middle. It’s got to be confusing for everybody.

The rationale for daylight saving time going all the way back to Franklin has always been energy savings. In response to the 1973 energy crisis, Congress moved the start of daylight saving time back to the last Sunday in February.

The move was justified by a Department of Transportation study that suggested the energy equivalent of 600,000 barrels of oil could be saved each year by observing daylight saving time in March and April. The move was widely unpopular, and was repealed amid widespread public criticism in 1976.

In fact there is little quantifiable evidence to support the claim that substantial energy savings can be had simply by moving the hands of a clock.

Read: Why Arizona doesn't observe daylight saving time

In 2006, after 60 years of disagreement, the Indiana General Assembly adopted daylight saving time throughout the state for the first time. That offered a unique opportunity for a large, statewide examination of any energy saving benefits.

A 2009 report published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that the uniform application of daylight saving time actually cost the state of Indiana an extra $9 million annually. The report, published by University of California economists Matthew Kotchen and Laura Grant found that while daytime use of household lighting did decrease because of the extra hour of morning light, this was more than offset by an extra demand for air conditioning on summer evenings and heating in early spring and late fall mornings.

A similar study by an economist for the California Energy Commission came up with a similar conclusion. Overall energy consumption in California dropped by only two-tenths of 1 percent because of daylight saving time, a fraction that fell well within the studies statistical margin of error of 1.5 percent.

Still, the tradition on daylight saving time is unlikely to go away anytime soon. In fact, just 10 years ago Congress again extended daylight saving time, this time to last until the first Sunday in November.

While the myth of energy savings was again a prime congressional motivator, the last change in schedule was more closely attached to another American tradition – Halloween.

Through 2006 the first day of daylight saving time most frequently happened before Oct. 31 – Halloween. National accident safety studies show that a child is four times more likely to be struck by a vehicle on Halloween night than on any other night of the year. The logic was to move daylight saving time forward to the first Sunday in November to give the trick-or-treaters more light and therefore more safety from traffic accidents.

The change was heavily lobbied for by U.S. candy manufacturers.

While no conclusive studies have been undertaken, there is much anecdotal evidence that suggest extending the date for daylight saving time has had much effect on child safety either. It appears that many children simply wait an extra hour before going trick-or-treating.

Don’t forget to set your clocks forward one hour before you go to bed Sunday.

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