Ben Franklin was only kidding when he suggested 232 years ago that towns should employ the use of church bells or cannon blasts, if necessary, to wake citizens at sunrise so they could take full advantage of sunlight – a thrifty alternative to pricey candle power.
More than two centuries later, the joke’s still on us. This Sunday is the annual ritual of moving our clocks ahead one hour at 2:00 a.m. (of course, nobody will know if you do it a little early like when you head off to bed ).
Not to be left in the dark by our European counterparts, the United States officially adopted Daylight Saving Time for the first time during World War I, and again during World War II.
But it was not without controversy, even then.
By the end of WWI, city dwellers learned to love daylight saving. But country folk, still in tune with nature’s clock, became disgruntled once they realized they’d actually have to rise before the sun if they were to get their goods on outbound trains that, under daylight saving, left town an hour earlier.
The main purpose of Daylight Saving Time (called “Summer Time” in many places in the world) is to make better use of daylight. We change our clocks during the summer months to move an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening.