Who invented daylight saving time? Will it become permanent in the U.S.?
Fun fact! According to the American Heart Association, daylight saving time can increase the chances of fatigue and affect the heart & brain. For example, hospital admissions for an irregular heartbeat pattern, heart attacks, and strokes often increase in the first few days of daylight saving time.
Who would’ve thought a time change could have so many adverse effects. So why do we have daylight saving time in the first place? Who invented daylight saving time? Will it become permanent in the U.S.?
On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate passed legislation to make daylight saving time permanent starting in 2023. If passed in the House and signed by President Biden, Americans would never again have to set their clocks back an hour and lose an hour of afternoon daylight in the fall & winter.
Who invented daylight saving time?
If you look forward to daylight saving, thank its inventor, the New Zealand scientist George Vernon Hudson & British builder William Willett. In 1895, Hudson presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society, proposing a two-hour shift forward in October and a two-hour shift back in March.
The Germans then popularized daylight saving time during WWI, before it became a bill in the U.S. in later decades. Nevertheless, countries all over the world were adopting this schedule.
During the 1973 oil embargo, the U.S. Congress ordered a year-round DST period lasting from January 1974 to April 1975. The rationale was to study the effects of seasonal time change on energy consumption.
The Senate approved the measure, called the Sunshine Protection Act, unanimously by voice vote. Senator Marco Rubio, one of the bill’s sponsors, said after input from airlines & broadcasters that supporters agreed that the change would not take place until November 2023.
Will it become permanent in the U.S.?
About thirty states since 2015 have introduced legislation to end the twice-yearly changing of clocks, with some states proposing to do it only if neighboring states do the same. Pallone cited a 2019 poll that found that 71% of Americans prefer to switch their clocks no longer twice a year.
The House Energy & Commerce Committee held a hearing on the issue this month. Representative Frank Pallone, the committee’s chairman, said that “the loss of that one hour of sleep seems to impact us for days afterwards. It also can cause havoc on the sleeping patterns of our kids and our pets.”
The use of daylight saving time has been in place in nearly all of the United States since the 1960s. Year-round daylight saving time was adopted in 1973 in a bid to reduce energy use because of an oil embargo and repealed a year later.
Contrary to popular belief daylight saving time did not help farmers. The truth of the matter is the agriculture industry lobbied against daylight saving time in 1919. Some believe it was then that farmers became associated with daylight saving time, even though they were only involved because they were against it.
Although modern DST has only been used for about 100 years, ancient civilizations are known to have engaged in comparable practices thousands of years ago. For example, the Roman water clocks used different scales for different months of the year to adjust the daily schedules to the solar time.
Who invented daylight saving time? Will it become permanent in the U.S.?
Although it was invented by a New Zealand Scientist & British builder, it’s an old idea that has out welcomed its stay. There are claims that getting rid of daylight saving time will allow adults & children to enjoy the outdoors and decrease seasonal depression.
Daylight saving time is now used in over seventy countries worldwide and affects over one billion people every year. Soon, the U.S may be leaving this statistic daylight saving time as something of the past.
