I remember when I was a kid asking my father about the clock changes with Daylight Savings Time.

"It's so the farmers have more daylight," is the response I remember him giving me.

This weekend, Daylight Savings Time ends and the clocks fall back one hour. But where the heck did this practice come from?

After a little research, I learned that adjusting clocks to save daylight hours can actually be traced back to ancient times. Roman water clocks had different settings for different periods of the year, insinuating that the Romans actually had this idea a long, long, time ago.

In the late 1700s, Ben Franklin was also recorded as making the suggestion of clock time changes in America, although his comments were made in jest over a French article about preserving candles but taking better advantage of daylight.

You can actually thank New Zealand scientist George Vernon Hudson, who wrote a paper in the late 1800s suggesting a time change.

The British actually picked up on George's idea and presented legislation in 1908, but the UK didn't actually put the practice in place until 1916.

During World War One, the Germans popularized the practice in an attempt to save fuel for lighting, to keep more resources for the war effort.

Today more than 70 countries use the concept with a variety of dates for time changes.

There has been talk of eliminating Daylight Saving Time altogether, but then what fun would it be not seeing a coworker show up an hour early or an hour late a couple of times a year?

I will remind you that Daylight Savings Time is a great time to change the batteries in your smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors, too!

So one last time... this Saturday night (11/6) before bed, make sure your clock FALLS BACK one hour. And if you want to read more about the history of Daylight Savings Time, click HERE.

 

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