Early to bed, early to rise

Benjamin Franklin gets credit for lots of things. Some of these things he deserves credit for. He invented bifocals, charted the Gulf Stream, and designed a potbellied stove that kept 18th century America toasty warm during the harsh winters. He published an almanac that gave him the chance to write quotable quotes like "early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise."

But Franklin gets credit for things he never did And one of those things is inventing the idea of Daylight Savings Time. Yes, Franklin rose early. He advocated rising with the sun as a healthy and productive activity. He calculated huge energy savings (in candles and lamp oil) by using daylight instead of artificial light to work by.

But he didn't suggest changing clocks in the spring and fall. People didn't really live by the clock in the 1700s--the clock became an important thing when train schedules came along in the 1800s. So it wouldn't occur to a great populist practical 18th-century mind to mess with timepieces every spring and autumn.

No, it was a British builder called William Willett who suggested adjusting clocks to take advantage of summer's extra sunshine hours. And he thought it up in 1905 and first published his ideas in 1907.

The United States adopted Daylight Savings Time on March 19, 1918 by an Act of Congress. It ran from March 31st, and was so widely hated that the act was repealed the following year. FDR instituted a year-round fuel-saving Daylight Savings Time called War Time between Feb 6th, 1942 and Sept 30th, 1945. Then the Federal government left adoption of seasonal clock adjustment up to the individual states until 1966.

The birthplace of seasonal clock-turning, Britain, adopted British Summer Time adjustment in 1916, and has stuck with it ever since.

And speaking of history, winter time is over as of 2am tomorrow morning. Spring your clocks ahead tonight!