History of Daylight Savings

Post ancient civilizations Benjamin Franklin was not the first to propose Daylight Savings Time, but he was the first to get people thinking about it. He proposed in an anonymous letter that people wake up earlier so that so many candles weren't wasted.

Modern DST was first proposed by the New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson, and then later by Englishman William Willett who was appalled by all of the people in London who slept through a summer day.

Germany was the first to use Daylight Savings Time to conserve coal during World War 1. The United States starting using it in 1918.

Today some people argue that we don't need daylight savings anymore. The Candy companies have a different perspective:

"Everyone from factory owners to retailers embraced the change. Even the candy lobby supported the new system, figuring the extra hour of sunlight meant it would be safer for kids to go trick-or-treating on Halloween."

One of the main arguments people use to back up Daylight Savings Time is to make better use of the daylight because this leads to saving energy. This is from the California Energy Commission:

In general, energy use and the demand for electricity for lighting our homes is directly connected to when we go to bed and when we get up. Bedtime for most of us is late evening through the year. When we go to bed, we turn off the lights and TV."

Michael Downing, a teacher at Tufts University and the author of "Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time," says messing with the clock doesn’t really save energy. “Daylight saving is still a boon to purveyors of barbecue grills, sports and recreation equipment and the petroleum industry, as gasoline consumption increases every time we increase the length of the daylight saving period,” Downing tells MNN. “Give Americans an extra hour of after-dinner daylight, and they will go to the ballpark or the mall — but they won't walk there.”

For more on the on going controversy here is an interesting article.