Daylight Saving Time - Love it or Hate it?

Yup, it's almost that time again when we change our clocks (and for many of us our plethora of watches...) to accomodate the time change. 

Daylight savings time is a real thing and I frankly don't understand why. I've always been told it was to allow for extra daylight for farmers. In my head that made sense, albeit seemingly antiquated in today's more modern world.

Turns out, the original idea was meant to save on energy bills. And not the way you'd think. According to Inverse.com, Benjamin Franklin proposed the idea in the hopes of decreasing the worlds cash outlay on candles. Yes, candles. The idea being that with more awake hours during sunlight hours we'd need to burn less candles. 

The idea started floating around the world and more people began championing the cost savings strategy. According to History.com (and several other sources), George Vernon, a New Zealand based entomologist, proposed a 2-hour time shift to the Royal Society of New Zealand back in 1895. Rumor has it, he wanted more daylight time to catch bugs. Man, those must have been some interesting bugs. 

It wasn't until the turn of the century and the beginning of World War I that countries began to official adopt the time change strategy as a way to conserve energy and focus it on the war effort. The time change ended at the conclusion of the war but began again in 1942 with World War II.

In 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which standardized daylight savings time across the nation and established the official guidelines. 

According to several sources, the "energy savings" have no continued and in fact, the time change may be costing us more as we run the air conditioners longer during the daylight hours. In fact, Hawaii and Arizona have opted out of daylight savings time preferring to stay on standard time year round. 

Personally, I'm not a fan of daylight savings time but unfortunately I think it's here to stay. I suspect one day we'll realize that it's not necessary but until then I'm gonna be at the ready to fumble through awkwardly adjusting the microwave and oven clock. And god forbid they're not perfectly synched up. 😂

*Sources: 

https://www.history.com/news/why-do-we-have-daylight-saving-time

https://www.inverse.com/science/what-is-daylight-saving-time-science-behind-turning-back-the-clocks