On March 14th, at 2 AM, we all change our clocks for the beginning of Daylight Savings. Did you know that Benjamin Franklin came up with the original idea?
But it was a joke!
In 1784, Franklin penned a satirical letter to the editor of the Journal of Paris outlining how many pounds of candle wax the city would save (64,050,000 pounds, according to his calculations) if only its clocks were better aligned with the rise and set of the sun. If residents had trouble adjusting, he suggested the city “let cannon be fired in every street, to wake the sluggards effectually.”
Though daylight savings wasn’t officially proposed until 1895 by George Hudson, an entomologist from New Zealand, it was Ben Franklin that introduced the idea more than a century earlier. Though his letter was humorous, he was only partially joking. Franklin was a very thrifty man, always looking for ways to save money, to conserve, and to get things done more efficiently.
So George Hudson proposed his idea in 1895, hoping for more sunshine to go bug hunting during the summer months (yes, really), and the notion was revived again during World War 1, when the country was faced with energy conservation concerns due to the war effort. Daylight Saving was officially passed into law in 1918.
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