In spring we spring forward, and in fall we fall back ... but why?
As the days get shorter in the
fall, we set our clocks an hour back to take advantage of the extra
morning sunlight. Daylight saving time lasts until spring when the
clocks go forward again. At this point, the custom doesn’t seem to mean
much besides an extra hour of sleep (or an hour less in the spring), but
it all started as a money-saving scheme.
You might have heard that Benjamin Franklin invented daylight saving
time, but that’s not the case. In 1784, he wrote a tongue-in-cheek
letter to
The Journal of Paris
sharing a story of being woken up by the sun at 6 a.m., when he didn’t
expect it before noon. “I considered that, if I had not been awakened so
early in the morning, I should have slept six hours longer by the light
of the sun, and in exchange have lived six hours the following night by
candle-light,” he wrote. Candles cost money, but sunlight is free, so
he laid out a plan to have Parisians get up with the sun in the spring
and summer.
Read the rest of Marissa Laliberte's story at
www.rd.com/culture/why-we-have-daylight-saving-time/.
