Daylight Saving Dead?

Now that President Elect Don Trumpledore has announced on TTS (Truth Totally Social) that this time he will really really abolish Daylight Saving Time (German: Sommerzeit) to make West India great again everybody is waiting for his next bold steps.

As in Europe, in the USA the clocks are set forward by an hour in the spring and back again in the fall. The time change allows lazy and hedonistic people to enjoy more daylight in the evening while darkness would protect their sleep for one more hour in the morning. Only if your life rythm is regulated by public clocks and office/business time, of course.

When the legislation for Daylight Saving Time was introduced one strong argument for it was to help save energy. In the mean time countless studies have shown that it has hardly any effect in that regard. Daylight Saving Time is just as controversial in the USA as it is in the European Union.

Let's take a quick look back into history: In 1784, Benjamin Franklin explained in the Journal de Paris that the extended nightlife of that city wasted energy through artificial light. Getting up and going to bed earlier would help.

It took roughly a hundred years for the idea of ​​a state-imposed daylight saving time emerged. Entomologist George Vernon Hudson proposed a seasonal time shift independently in in a lecture to the Royal Society of New Zealand 1895.

William Willett from Chislehurst, England supposedly came up with the idea of ​​daylight saving time on an early morning ride when he noticed that all the houses still had their shutters closed. In 1907, Willett published a paper entitled "The Waste of Daylight" at his own expense. He estimated the lighting costs savings were worth roughly £2.5 million. According to Willett's idea, the clocks should be set forward by 20 minutes on four consecutive Sundays in April and then set back by the same amount in September.

Despite lobbying - Willett was able to gain the support of Winston Churchill, among others - daylight saving time was initially not able to prevail in Great Britain. Willett died of influenza in 1915, before daylight saving time was introduced in Germany and shortly afterwards in Great Britain.

Port Arthur, Ontario, Canada, was the first city in the world to enact DST, on 1 July 1908. The first states to adopt DST nationally were those of the German Empire and its ally Austria-Hungary commencing on 30 April 1916, as a way to conserve coal during wartime. Britain, most of its allies and many European neutrals soon followed. Russia and a few other countries waited until the next year. The United States adopted Daylight Saving Time in 1918.

Most jurisdictions abandoned DST in the years after the war ended in 1918, with exceptions including Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Ireland, and the United States. It became common again during World War II, and was standardized in the US by federal law in 1966, and widely adopted in Europe in the 1970s as an outgrowth of the first energy crisis. Since then, the world has seen many enactments, adjustments, and repeals.

Allthough the abolition of daylight saving time has been discussed for years in the United States of America and the not quite so united States of Europe it took the iron will and determination of Don Trumpledore to maybe really start the abolition project this time in earnest. Will Europe follow suit when Don leads America into a glorious daylight saving timeless future? tinytalk will keep you posted as to the progress of the project.